A Recipe for Bees (Paperback)

The book is a love story--of a long marriage. At each turn of events, the marriage is different. In the beginning, you wonder how Augusta can stand her life with Karl on the cold comfort farm that killed his own mother. But Augusta finds ways to cope. She fishes with the pastor of her church. She finds work in town to earn a little pin money. She takes a lover, she has a baby, she takes up bee-keeping. The bees are always hovering in the background. Augusta learned bee-keeping by observing her mother Helen. When Helen dies, Augusta's father Manny turns out the hives, a European custom to aid the ascent of the beekeeper's soul. All the swarms of bees disburse except for one that stays until sunset, clustered in a ball against the kitchen window. Then "catching the last of the light [the bees flew] off in a glittering golden-red globe that moved through the sky as if guided by a single mind."