Bea's life was a mess. She got canned from her junior financial analyst job when she boldly predicted a major storm that would bring farming to its knees. It started a buying/selling frenzy that came to a crashing halt when the storm never materialized and the SEC got involved. Oooops. Now she was financial poison, colleagues wouldn't return her calls, and headhunters were just not interested. It didn't help that her sometime boyfriend wouldn't return her messages either, and she started seeing Instagram pics of him strolling through sunlit fields with their mutual friend. How was she going to pay the mortgage on her Brooklyn apartment, let alone on her hippy dippy Mom's house rental in Utah. She hasn't seen her mom, Christy, since her grandmother died six months ago, and her impetuous mom took off for Salt Lake City because the vibes were better in the desert. She should go visit as long as she has time on her hands.
After a depressing dinner of uncooked eggs, Christy tells Bea that she is going away this weekend to hike the desert with a Facebook friend named Bob who got them a motel room and will pay all of her expenses. Seems that they are members of an online group called The Conversation. An eccentric pilot who collected artifacts buried a million dollars worth of them somewhere in the Utah desert and wrote a poem that offered clues to where it was. Members of the Conversation helped, hindered and discussed with the others ways to find it. Christy had studied the clues very closely and had made a map of where she thought she could find the treasure, and she and Bob are going this weekend to see. Bea thought the whole thing was ridiculous but decided to go too to check out this Bob character.
The novel is the mother/daughter road trip from hell where both are going to be surprised, disappointed, and hopeful, and they will finally learn about each other in ways that they never had before. The descriptions of the open Utah desert are beautiful, and a lot of the dialogue is laugh-out-loud funny. Boland really has a way with words and I would recommend the audiobook to get the full flavor of her writing. If you want to get away from it all then this is the book for you.
Reviewed by Donna Ballard
January 13, 2026
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