trying to identify a sci/fi book about an abandoned colony/world

Question

My fiancé read a book when he was younger, but he cannot remember the title or author.

The human race colonized another planet and decided to abandon the colony for one reason or another.

The older people, who had spent their whole life on the colony decided to stay behind, and the book was about how the native life of the planet started coming back to life after most of the humans left.

I have no idea, it sounds like nothing I can think of. He says he thinks it may be a female author.

Can anyone help? Thank you!!!!

Answer 1

Credit to suelleker for this find (see comment above). The answer (confirmed by OP comment above) is Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon.

Per the summary found at overdrive.com (possibly the source of sueeleker's quote):

For forty years, Colony 3245.12 has been Ofelia's home. On this planet far away in space and time from the world of her youth, she has lived and loved, weathered the death of her husband, raised her one surviving child, lovingly tended her garden, and grown placidly old. And it is here that she fully expects to finish out her days--until the shifting corporate fortunes of the Sims Bancorp Company dictates that Colony 3245.12 is to be disbanded, its residents shipped off, deep in cryo-sleep, to somewhere new and strange and not of their choosing. But while her fellow colonists grudgingly anticipate a difficult readjustment on some distant world, Ofelia savors the promise of a golden opportunity. Not starting over in the hurly-burly of a new community... but closing out her life in blissful solitude, in the place she has no intention of leaving. A population of one.