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 Library Journal
On the 48th anniversary of her marriage to Karl, Augusta awaits word of the results of her beloved son-in-law's brain surgery and reflects on her life's tribulations. Having lost her mother at 14, Augusta was no stranger to hardship when she married at 18. Still, life with the much-older Karl and his miserly father on a remote farm that had not seen a woman's touch in decades was initially almost too much to bear. But, finally, after she had found tenderness with another man and borne his child, Augusta was able to lure Karl from his father to a farm of their own. There, Augusta started keeping bees to earn a little extra money and began to find some sweetness in her marriage. Already a best seller in Canada and England, this moving story by the talented Anderson-Dargatz (The Cure for Death by Lightning) is bound to win her a devoted American audience. Recommended for public libraries.ADebbie Bogenschutz, Cincinnati State Technical & Community Coll. Lib. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Sally Eckhoff
The craft of beekeeping provides some of the most memorable moments...


From Booklist
There's nothing fancy in the telling of this plainspoken tale, but the language shimmers with longing and things left unsaid. Augusta and Karl Olsen now live in Vancouver, after 48 years of marriage; they've sold their farm and await news of their gravely ill son-in-law, Gabe. The story spins back in time like the conversation of old women: Augusta remembers her mother's beekeeping and her mother's death, Karl's slovenly and vicious old father, and the hardships of making a farm work before electric power. Augusta and the local reverend form a deep, almost furtive friendship; like her mother before her, Augusta conceives the child of a man not her husband. Augusta has glimpses, occasionally, of the future, dim enough to be dreams rather than portents. It is a vision of her mother that brings her back to the bees, their communal life and their golden sweetness forming a running metaphor through the telling. Anderson-Dargatz's tenderness, particularly toward the indignities of age, is sparely rendered and almost unbearably moving. GraceAnne A. DeCandido


From Kirkus Reviews
While her special son-in-law undergoes brain surgery, a retired farmer and beekeeper recalls her life of hardship and denial in western Canada, with a few honeyed moments mixed in. A memorable follow-up to the equally atmospheric The Cure for Death by Lightning (1996). There isn't much Augusta doesn't know about beesher mother was a beekeeper and shes been one herself as well. But between those calming periods of hives and swarms, Augusta has had her fair share of ups and downswhich, during her beekeeping son-in-law Gabe's seemingly endless operation, she has time to review. Teenage Augusta's second sight had already shown her that her mother, Helen, would die in childbirth. After this, Augusta accepts the red-faced, awkward advances of an older neighbor, Karl, and moves as his bride to his father's house and sheep farm. There she suffers her husband's navet and his father's outright contempt until her headstrong nature rebels: Her first acts of defiance, weekly fly-fishing trips with her minister, give way to day jobs in the closest big town, then to a brazen, passionate affair with a big man she knows only as Joe. Gossip forces her to stop what she'd started, but Augusta's return to the sheep farm is temporary. At her father's death, which follows the birth of her daughter, Joy, she inherits the family place and settles there with Karl; long, hardscrabble years later, with Joy herself a headstrong teenager, Augusta again revolts and bolts, although this time returns home to discover solace, as her mother did, in the company of bees. With their help she finally finds a place in her wild heart for her dull yet adoring husband, and the renewed will to keep her precious secret. Too many time shifts between Augusta old and young, perhaps, but nonetheless there's a wonderful vitality to her, and to the rich, buzzing lore she inherits and makes her own. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"Gail Anderson-Dargatz has something that no amount of craft can give a writer: She is hopelessly in love with and attentive to her subject, the physical world and all its gifts." -- The Globe and Mail

"A wonder to be cherished: a wise, beautiful and deeply felt novel that reminds us all that it's never too late to fall in love." -- Chris Bohjalian, author of Midwives

"Succeeds with unexpected elegance and energy... Margaret Laurence meets Gabriel García Márquez." -- Elm Street

"A richly textured, life-affirming novel teeming with the small, hard-won victories that make life not only bearable, but glorious." -- Kitchener-Waterloo Record

"She shares the rich vision of fellow Canadians Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro.... Wonderful, salty descriptions of the prairie and its people. This is a real discovery." -- The Mail on Sunday (UK)

?I ended up reading the book in one sitting, hardly noticing that I was getting burned by the Long Beach sun.? -- Geist Magazine

?(a) heady blend of earthy realism and romantic exoticism...This is a bravura work that in several ways recalls Carol Shields?s The Stone Diaries. What Gail Anderson-Dargatz has achieved is a commemoration of a lifestyle and a collection of characters that live on when the novel is finished.? -- The Times Literary Supplement


From the Trade Paperback edition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When her mother dies, Augusta is bereft and without direction until she marries her first suitor, Karl, the shy son of a detestable old farmer. As a young woman with an eye for beauty who longs for affection, she finds life on their remote, rustic farm almost unbearable. When the local reverend offers the occasional afternoon relief from her cloistered existence, she accepts; when another man from the town shows interest, she feels herself drawn toward him. Eventually, she and Karl and their young daughter, Joy, move onto a farm of their own, and Augusta looks for new ways to assert her independence. It is not until she resurrects her mother's beekeeping equipment that sweet possibilities become evident. And as the strands of her life unexpectedly twist together, the indulgences of youth and the many delights and exasperations of old age are revealed.

FROM THE CRITICS

Sophia Watson

It is very refreshing, when reading a book, to enter a fictional world almost through the nose....Read [A Recipe for Bees] for the smells. -- Literary Review

Publishers Weekly

Already published in the U.K. and a bestseller in Canada, Anderson-Dargatz's (The Cure for Death by Lightning) latest is a warm and wise love story, an exploration of the extraordinary as revealed in everyday lives. Augusta Olsen inherited from her mother a passion for bee-keeping along with a spirited nature and the often troubling gift of clairvoyance. At 18, she marries 30-year-old Karl Olsen, a shy man who takes her to live with his domineering father, Olaf, on an isolated farm in British Columbia. Augusta quickly grows to resent Karl's taciturnity, his refusal to stand up to his tyrannical father and his lack of sexual finesse. Determined not to give in to despair, Augusta accepts the friendship of the local minister, finds work in town and has a brief affair with Joe, a gracious and sensuous man very unlike her husband. Karl bears "with equilibrium" the cruel small-town gossip about Augusta's infidelity, even after the birth of a daughter he knows isn't his. Augusta impels her young family's move from Olaf's farm, but only years later does she rediscover the "ointment for her soul" in bee-keeping, starting a small business that reconnects her to the community and sparks her first "love affair" with Karl. As she ages, Augusta struggles less with Karl's stoic temperament, coming to appreciate his steadiness and the miracle of the way he expresses his love for her in "a simple gesture he had been planning for a day or two, a message contained in flowers." Augusta is a headstrong heroine with prismatic perspectives; her long, never-dull life as told by the gifted Anderson-Dargatz is both charming and impressive in its quiet, cumulative power. The author's family photos, which introduce some chapters, add resonance to her touching tale.(Jan.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal