A Recipe for Bees: A Novel - Softcover

Anderson-Dargatz, Gail

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385720483 ISBN 13: 9780385720489

Publisher: Anchor, 2001

Synopsis

Gail Anderson-Dargatz's evocative novel of one woman's simple but passionately lived life reminds of us of the pleasure to be found in human contact and simple, natural things.

Raised by her silent but companionable father and a mother who kept bees, headstrong Augusta marries shy, deferential Karl, twelve years her senior, and goes to live with him on his father's remote farm. Terrified that she will literally die from loneliness and isolation, she finds work in town, and for a short time, fulfillment with another man in a romance that will reverberate throughout her life. Not until many years later does she find her salvation in beekeeping, the practice she first learned from her mother. It is beekeeping that reconnects her to the world and at long last brings fire to her steadfast marriage.

About this title

Review:

Augusta Olsen has seven cats, a son-in-law in the hospital "for tests," and a husband who never says what he is thinking. A Recipe for Bees looks back over her life story, from a childhood on a farm in rural Canada through various waves of premonition and loss. As a young girl she is infatuated with the handsome and mysterious Joe, but all she has left of him is a pendant: a bee frozen in amber. When her mother dies, she marries Karl, who loves her so much that his face reddens when he looks at her. He makes her feel safe and irritable. Only late in life when she rediscovers her mother's beekeeping equipment does Augusta find a true opening into the past, as she spends hours out among the swarms, observing how "a handful of bees felt for all the world like a handful of warm black currants."

A Recipe for Bees is most original and compelling in such passages, which have inherent metaphoric power. It is not for readers seeking the overtly provocative--Gail Anderson-Dargatz stays within a passionate but circumscribed set of images and emotions. A prizewinner for her previous novel The Cure for Death by Lightning, the author will appeal to readers who understand the power of everyday tragedies. --Emily White

From the Back Cover:

?A Recipe for Bees reminds us all it?s never too late to fall in love.??Chris Bohjalian, author of Midwives

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0385720483
• ISBN 13: 9780385720489
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320