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The Music of Bees
Cover of The Music of Bees
The Music of Bees
A Novel
Borrow Borrow
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER!
A Good Morning America BUZZ PICK | A Good Housekeeping Book Club Pick | IndieNext Pick | LibraryReads Pick | Recommended by People The Washington PostWoman's WorldNY Post BookRiot ∙ Bookish ∙ Christian Science Monitor Nerd Daily ∙ The Tempest ∙ Midwestness ∙ The Coil ∙ Read It Forward and more!

“An exquisite debut that combines a moving tale of friendship with a fascinating primer on bees.”—People

“This heartwarming, uplifting story will make you want to call your own friends, not to mention grab some honey.”—Good Housekeeping

Three lonely strangers in a rural Oregon town, each working through grief and life's curveballs, are brought together by happenstance on a local honeybee farm where they find surprising friendship, healing—and maybe even a second chance—just when they least expect it.


Forty-four-year-old Alice Holtzman is stuck in a dead-end job, bereft of family, and now reeling from the unexpected death of her husband. Alice has begun having panic attacks whenever she thinks about how her life hasn't turned out the way she dreamed. Even the beloved honeybees she raises in her spare time aren't helping her feel better these days.
In the grip of a panic attack, she nearly collides with Jake—a troubled, paraplegic teenager with the tallest mohawk in Hood River County—while carrying 120,000 honeybees in the back of her pickup truck. Charmed by Jake's sincere interest in her bees and seeking to rescue him from his toxic home life, Alice surprises herself by inviting Jake to her farm.
And then there's Harry, a twenty-four-year-old with debilitating social anxiety who is desperate for work. When he applies to Alice's ad for part-time farm help, he's shocked to find himself hired. As an unexpected friendship blossoms among Alice, Jake, and Harry, a nefarious pesticide company moves to town, threatening the local honeybee population and illuminating deep-seated corruption in the community. The unlikely trio must unite for the sake of the bees—and in the process, they just might forge a new future for themselves.
Beautifully moving, warm, and uplifting, The Music of Bees is about the power of friendship, compassion in the face of loss, and finding the courage to start over (at any age) when things don't turn out the way you expect.
“A hopeful, uplifting story about the power of chosen family and newfound home and beginning again . . . but it’s the bees, with all their wonder and intricacy and intrigue, that make this story sing.”
Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is

"Eileen Garvin's debut novel is uplifting, funny, bold, and inspirational. The Music of Bees sings!"
—Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER!
A Good Morning America BUZZ PICK | A Good Housekeeping Book Club Pick | IndieNext Pick | LibraryReads Pick | Recommended by People The Washington PostWoman's WorldNY Post BookRiot ∙ Bookish ∙ Christian Science Monitor Nerd Daily ∙ The Tempest ∙ Midwestness ∙ The Coil ∙ Read It Forward and more!

“An exquisite debut that combines a moving tale of friendship with a fascinating primer on bees.”—People

“This heartwarming, uplifting story will make you want to call your own friends, not to mention grab some honey.”—Good Housekeeping

Three lonely strangers in a rural Oregon town, each working through grief and life's curveballs, are brought together by happenstance on a local honeybee farm where they find surprising friendship, healing—and maybe even a second chance—just when they least expect it.


Forty-four-year-old Alice Holtzman is stuck in a dead-end job, bereft of family, and now reeling from the unexpected death of her husband. Alice has begun having panic attacks whenever she thinks about how her life hasn't turned out the way she dreamed. Even the beloved honeybees she raises in her spare time aren't helping her feel better these days.
In the grip of a panic attack, she nearly collides with Jake—a troubled, paraplegic teenager with the tallest mohawk in Hood River County—while carrying 120,000 honeybees in the back of her pickup truck. Charmed by Jake's sincere interest in her bees and seeking to rescue him from his toxic home life, Alice surprises herself by inviting Jake to her farm.
And then there's Harry, a twenty-four-year-old with debilitating social anxiety who is desperate for work. When he applies to Alice's ad for part-time farm help, he's shocked to find himself hired. As an unexpected friendship blossoms among Alice, Jake, and Harry, a nefarious pesticide company moves to town, threatening the local honeybee population and illuminating deep-seated corruption in the community. The unlikely trio must unite for the sake of the bees—and in the process, they just might forge a new future for themselves.
Beautifully moving, warm, and uplifting, The Music of Bees is about the power of friendship, compassion in the face of loss, and finding the courage to start over (at any age) when things don't turn out the way you expect.
“A hopeful, uplifting story about the power of chosen family and newfound home and beginning again . . . but it’s the bees, with all their wonder and intricacy and intrigue, that make this story sing.”
Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is

"Eileen Garvin's debut novel is uplifting, funny, bold, and inspirational. The Music of Bees sings!"
—Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author
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  • From the cover

    Chapter Two

    Twelve Queens
    The queen bee is the only perfect female in the hive, and all the eggs are laid by her.
    —L. L. Langstroth

    Alice Holtzman would have rated her mood below average even before she hit the wall of traffic creeping down Interstate 84 back to Hood River. She blamed the young imbeciles at Sunnyvale Bee Company in Portland who had mixed up her order, which had delayed her departure and landed her in this late-afternoon sea of cars and trucks. To be more precise, they had lost her order, which was frustrating because Alice was a regular customer at Sunnyvale and also because, as a point of personal pride, she tried hard to be conscientious.
    Things were always crazy on Bee Day, an annual event in April, and she acknowledged that. After all, the Sunnyvale Bee Company saw hundreds of millions of bees move through their yard on that single day. When Alice arrived, she saw hundreds of bee packages awaiting pickup. Each small, screened crate held ten thousand bees, all buzzing with confusion at their recent sorting in the bee yards of southern Oregon from whence they came. The precious cargo, trucked in before dawn, had to be picked up, transported, and hived within twenty-four hours. Hundreds of beekeepers would descend on Sunnyvale to claim their bees on an average Bee Day, so things could get hectic.
    The car in front of her crept forward and slammed on its brakes. Alice exhaled through her nose with impatience. She looked at her watch and sighed. Yes, Alice knew Bee Day would be crazy. That was why she had taken the day off. It was a Thursday. You could never count on the bees arriving on a weekend. They came, like babies, unpredictably and often inconveniently. Alice and other expectant beekeepers had to wait until those southern hives grew strong with populations of young bees and the early-spring showers tapered off. Pickups were rescheduled all the time. A betting man wouldn’t put money on Bee Day, as intransigent as it was. Alice knew that. That was why she had called two days before, like she always did, to reconfirm her order with Tim, the cheerful shop manager who’d been there, she knew, for more than twenty years. It was impossible to tell how old Tim was. He was one of those men who’d looked old at twenty, probably, losing his hair right after high school, and now seemed ageless. Unflappable Tim. Alice didn’t even know his last name, but for the past several years, Tim had been a regular part of her life. Not a friend, exactly. More like a friendly milepost, a happy marker that said it was spring, Oregon’s winter was finally over, and it was time for fresh life in the apiary. For all its inconvenience, Alice usually loved Bee Day.
    But this year Tim hadn’t answered the phone when she called. Instead a young woman picked up and identified herself as Joyful.
    “How can I help make your day amazing?” she’d asked.
    Alice gave her name and order number while wondering if Joyful could possibly be her real name. Joyful had assured her that all orders would be filled as usual and that they would be thrilled to see her in two days. She hadn’t actually refused to look up Alice’s order, but she hadn’t looked it up either.
    “Be well!” she’d said, and hung up before Alice could say anything else.
    So as Alice stood watching Joyful with her blond dreadlocks hanging in her face as she pawed through the stack of orders and failed to find Alice’s, she had wanted to say, I told you so. She had wanted to say other things—things that would have disappointed her mother. Alice folded her arms over her chest, took a deep...

About the Author-
  • Eileen Garvin is a beekeeper and writer living in Hood River, Oregon. Her memoir, How to Be a Sister, was published in 2010. The Music of Bees is her debut novel.
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A Novel
Eileen Garvin
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