“Immensely moving and very funny.” — Megha Majumdar author of National Book Award finalist A
Guardian and a Thief “Wholly original and truly surprising Scavengers is an ode to
revisitation and reinvention proving that changing your views of other people is the only way
to change yourself. This is a desert rose of a debut.” —Courtney Maum author of Touch and
Costalegre A rollicking debut novel about a cautious daughter and her eccentric estranged
mother venturing west in search of buried treasure—and a way back to each other—before they run
out of patience money and options After being fired for taking an uncharacteristic risk at
her commodities trading job Bea Macon sublets her New York apartment and books a one-way
ticket to stay with her mother Christy a free spirit who has been living in Salt Lake City on
Bea's dime. Usually the responsible one Bea isn't about to admit exactly why she's suddenly
decided to visit but she isn’t the only one keeping secrets: Christy has a man. She has a map.
She has . . . a username on a forum devoted to unearthing $1 million in buried treasure that an
antiquities dealer claims to have hidden somewhere in the western U.S.? Bea is convinced this
is just another one of her mother’s wild larks an elaborate way to refuse as she has for
Bea’s entire life to finally grow up. But Christy believes she’s onto something—and she’s
arranged a rendezvous in a rural town called Mercy with the guy she’s been obsessively trading
theories with online to prove it. Out in the desert that one woman believes to be a promised
land the other a wasteland they find themselves barreling toward a more high-stakes
transformative escapade than either of them could have imagined. Populated with unforgettable
characters and set against one of the world’s most oddly enrapturing landscapes Scavengers is
a funny and heartbreaking novel about old injuries new beginnings and the lengths to which
we’ll go to find escape and reinvent ourselves.
