Longlisted for the 2022 PEN America/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collections
Winner of the High Plains Book Award for Short Stories
Finalist for the Reading the West Award in Debut Fiction
Finalist for the Colorado Book Award in Literary Fiction
Finalist for the WILLA Award in Multiform Fiction
One of the The Colorado Sun’s Best Books of 2021
One of Outside Magazine’s 20 Essential Works of Climate Fiction
Firmly rooted in the rural spaces and small towns of Colorado and Nevada, Site Fidelity spans the decades from the 1970s to a plausible near future. An ornithologist returns home to care for her rancher father and gets caught up trying to protect a breeding group of endangered Gunnison sage-grouse. A woman delivers her own baby in a Nevada ghost town. A young farmer hides her chicken flock from the government during a bird flu epidemic.
For readers of Pam Houston and Annie Proulx, Site Fidelity evokes the bleakness and beauty of our threatened western landscapes in lean, lyrical prose. It introduces unforgettable characters who must confront the challenges of caregiving and loss alongside the practical impacts of fracking, water rights law, and other agricultural policies–all aspects of life on the shifting terrain of our changing planet.
Claire Boyles 