Product Description
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.Amazon.com 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 forBees looks back over her life story, from a childhood on a farm inrural Canada through various waves of premonition and loss. As a younggirl she is infatuated with the handsome and mysterious Joe, but all shehas left of him is a pendant: a bee frozen in amber. When her motherdies, she marries Karl, who loves her so much that his face reddens when helooks at her. He makes her feel safe and irritable. Only late in lifewhen she rediscovers her mother's beekeeping equipment does Augusta find atrue 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 handfulof warm black currants."

A Recipe for Bees is most original and compelling in suchpassages, which have inherent metaphoric power. It is not for readersseeking the overtly provocative--Gail Anderson-Dargatz stays within apassionate butcircumscribed set of images andemotions. A prizewinner for her previous novel The Cure for DeathbyLightning, the author will appeal to readers who understand the powerof everyday tragedies. --Emily White ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

tedious
The catchy title, and engaging front flap summary drew me in, but this book did not deliver.
Other reviewers have hit the nail on the head with "tedious", and books glorifying adultery will never impress me.
Barbara Kingsolver's "Prodigal Summer" had more information about bees than this book, and without the misery involved.Prodigal Summer: A Novel

Animal lovers beware!
I enjoyed reading the book until about halfway through - there are a few instances of animal abuse (particularly about horses) that really bothered me, so I won't finish the rest of it because I don't know what other upsetting things might be contained in the book.Was the author trying to illustrate the rough, tough life of the Canadian wilderness?If so, I know I won't do any sightseeing there! If you love animals alot like I do, find something else to read!

Excellent writing, just not enough of it.
Gail Anderson-Dargatz, A Recipe for Bees (Harmony, 1998)

At first, A Recipe for Bees has the look and feel of your typical dysfunctional family novel. Augusta Olsen, traveling home from the hospital where herson-in-law is being operated on after a seizure-induced stroke, ends up getting off the train at the wrong stop to use the rest room. The train goes on without her, and Augusta calls her next-door neighbor, Rose to come pick her up.While Rose is driving her home, and after they get there, Augusta tells Rose and Karl, Augusta's husband, a number of stories about Augusta and Karl's lives up to this point, interspersed with present-day events and reflectionson things she'd rather not talk about aloud. While there is dysfunction in evidence all around, there are snatches of writing here and there that alert the reader that this isn't your typical novel; Anderson-Dargatz is capableof much more than the average...novel of the week.

Those moments of inspired, poetic writing are few, however, and some of them are easily missed in the greater scheme of things. A Recipe for Bees is oneof the most difficult kinds of novels to read, a book with almost no pace to it that demands all the concentration the reader can give it. The first few chapters, especially, are quite difficult to get through. Once you've got asense of the characters, the book gets more engrossing, and eventually it does give the distinct feeling that Anderson-Dargatz will eventually write the novels that will put her on a par with fellow Canadian authors...A Recipe for Bees isn't one of them, but years from now, scholars will come back to it and call it a formative novel.

I'll be looking forward to reading more of Anderson-Dargatz' work. ***

A gem of a book!
"Have I told you the drone's penis snaps off during intecourse with the queen bee?"

Great first sentence....wouldn't you say?This is how "The Recipe for Bees"begins. And it only gets better.

Dargatz deals with so many emotions, I found myself laughing one moment and crying the next....

Joy, humor, anger, sadness, spirituality....all tangled up together in one beautiful, unexpected package.

Augusta is old....but remembers what it was like to be young.

She is ahead of her time and feels she deserves more than what
she is getting....
living on the farm isn't what it's cracked up to be....
She is lonely and bored, gets no consideration or passion from her husband.

"Is this my life?"she wonders. "No love, no sex, no nothing."

"Is it really a man's world?"The first sentence gives the reader a superb indication of what Augusta thinks of that!

"As soon as the drone mounts and thrusts, he's paralyzed, his genitals snap off, and he falls backward a hundred feet to his death."

Iteresting and true....

Dargatz uses bees as usefull metaphores throughout this lovely piece of work...The bees are seasons.Augusta is in her last. She is already turning color along with the leaves.

To me, this book is filled with SPRING!

It unfolds and blooms and surprise us with a vivid new flower.... at times.... Even rising up through the snow.

Not as Sweet as I'd Hoped~
A Recipe for Bees reminded me a lot of the novel Vinegar Hill. In both stories, a wife is living in a dark, unpleasant home environment. In A Recipe for Bees, Augusta, an older lady, approaching the end of her life, reflects back upon her childhood and her marriage. Her mother dies at a young age, leaving her alone with an unaffectionate father. When she meets Karl and they become married, Augusta moves from one unaffectionate household to another. Living at Karl's father's farm, Augusta is only subject to more withholding of affection and is living a dark and depressing life. The rest of the novel delves into Augusta's search for independence and what she chooses to make of her life. The story takes us down journeys of the ups and downs of marriage, being a misfit in the community, and mother/daughter relationships. The main problem reading it, is that I couldn't find it in me to like the main character, Augusta. I also felt that the story left the reader with a depressed feeling of what marriage is like.The weaving of the "bee" theme added a nice touch to the story, but if you're looking for a great read with a "bee" them, try The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. The writing in A Recipe for Bees was good, but I felt the story was lacking something~ ... Read more

Product Description
Job Sanstrum sees sound in colour; the hum of the vacuum cleaner creates a soothing glass egg in his hands, the resonant ring of a wet finger run around a wine glass generates hues of merging pastel colours like the shifting gloss of northern lights that grace the sky of his home town Godsfinger, Alberta. This is a community of curious characters, and a town where crop circles occur, birds drop out of the sky, and a duck waddles around in a nappy. Still, Job is an outsider, and when his bullying pastor brother, Jacob, returns with his wife and troubled son to claim the family farmhouse, Job is forced out of his home into further solitude. In the diner Liv serves Job an extra large slice of blueberry pie, her bangles jingling, while Christal stands in stilletto's flipping burgers; Dithy squirts him with her water gun and instructs him to get out more. When his ability to see sound begins to fade and his one comfort is lost, Job realises he must look beyond himself and his solitary existence to find happiness and acceptance.In this exquisitely written novel Gail Anderson-Dargatz entwines her ability to make us understand and love characters, with her power to evoke the beauty in the minutiae of life and the tremendous natural forces of The Rhinestone Button's rural backdrop. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Lovely Book
When people asked me what this book was about, I had a hard time describing it."About nothing too interesting...well, about this guy who's really religious, and stuff happens...I don't know"But the weird part is that I absolutely loved it and couldn't put it down.The author had me hooked right away.It's the way she writes...brings you right there.

Took me home...
I just love this author. Her descriptions take me home, back to childhood, back to western Canada. Okay, I didn't identify much with the religious fanaticism of some of the characters in this one, but that wasn't all there was to them. I devoured this book and now wish I could fly back to Canada and dig the other two books I have by her out of my boxes in storage. If you liked her other books, this one won't disappoint.

Not much to like...
Sorry, but I found this book to be full of characters that didn't interest me in the slightest. The characters were filled out with quirkiness rather than depth, and most showed a mean streak, except Liv. I wasn't able to get a full sense of any of the characters except the preachers, who, in their fanaticism, are one-dimensional anyway.I wasn't able to care for these people who dealt with each other only on the surface, and always for their own purposes.Most were abusive to animals, neglecting to feed or water the animals that were their supposed livelihood - something only trash farmers would do. To say nothing of dumping dogs, putting a cat in a dishwasher, and leaving a bull to drown in mud.

Hungry for something in common, acceptance, and a purpose missing from each of their dull lives, most cling to the church, faking their way through the expected rituals. These characters didn't stay with me when I closed the book, and neither did the story. ... Read more

Product Description
Word count: 1728. ... Read more

Product Description
My memories are so like that hat full of butterflies, some already deteriorating the moment they are collected, some breathed back to life now and again, for a brief moment, by the scent on a passing wind–the smell of an orange, perhaps, or a whiff of brown-sugar fudge–before drifting away, just out of my reach. How much of myself flits away with each of these tattered memories? How much of myself have I already lost? (Turtle Valley, p. 289)

Kat has returned with her disabled husband and young son to her family’s homestead in Turtle Valley, in British Columbia’s Shuswap-Thompson area. Fire is sweeping through the valley in a ruthless progression toward the farm and they have come to help her frail parents pack up their belongings. Kat’s mother, Beth, (the now elderly protagonist of Anderson-Dargatz’s first novel, the award-winning The Cure for Death by Lightning) is weighed down by her ailing husband, Gus, and by generations of accumulated detritus. But there is something else weighing her down, a secret she has guarded all her life. Kat is determined to get to its source before fire eats up all that is left of the family’s memories.

Kat has her own burdens. Her father is dying, and the family has chosen to keep him home as long as possible in defiance of the approaching flames. Beth is showing signs of early dementia. And her husband, Ezra, is a husk of his former self, stolen from her years ago by a stroke and now battling frightening mood swings and a trick memory. Once filled with passion and hope, their relationship has become more like that of nursemaid and invalid.

Now thrust into contact with her parents’ neighbour Jude, her lover before Ezra, Kat finds his strength attractive, as well as his ongoing passion for her. As she considers her choices in love, Kat discovers that her grandmother, Maud, to whom she bears an uncanny resemblance, was once faced with a similar dilemma when forced to choose between the capricious violence of her shell-shocked husband, John Weeks, and the rugged constancy of their neighbour Valentine Svensson. Leafing through Maud’s scrapbooks and long-hidden love letters, Kat begins to unravel the mystery of her grandfather’s disappearance in the mountains. She is to find that like most family secrets, this one is tangled amidst generations of grief.

As sparks rain down upon them, Kat tries to hold her family together, soothing Ezra’s rages, comforting their son, Jeremy, tending to her mother’s fragile mental state and striving to keep her father at home and comfortable as he nears death. Masses of ladybugs swarm through the house and panicked birds smash windows. Shadowy ghosts flit in and out of the encroaching smoke. All around them the landscape burns and terrible choices must be made. What can be salvaged? What will survive after Turtle Valley has burned?

Turtle Valley is a novel of reconciliation and hope in the midst of terrible loss. Part ghost story, part mystery, part romance, the novel transcends these genres and carries its readers into new territories of forgiveness and acceptance of the difficult choices we all must make in finding our way through life and love. ... Read more

Product Description
When fifteen-year-old Beth Week’s family is attacked by a grizzly, her father becomesincreasingly violent, making him a danger to his neighbors, his family, and especially Beth. Meanwhile, several young children from the nearby Indian reservation have gone missing, and Beth fears that something is pursuing her in the bush. But friendship with an Indian girl connects her to a mythology that enriches her landscape; and an unexpected protector shores up her world.
Set on an isolated Canadian farm in the midst of World War II, The Cure for Death by Lightning evokes a life at once harshly demanding and rich in sensory pleasures:the deafening chatter of starlings, the sight of thousands of painted turtles crossing a road, the smell of baking that fills the Weeks’s kitchen.The novel is sprinkled throughout with recipes and remedies from the scrapbook Beth’s mother keeps, a boon to Beth as she learns to face down her demons--and one of many elements that give The Cure for Death by Lightning its enchanting vitality. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (24)

Country Style coming of age story
A year in the life of Beth Weeks, a 15/16 year old girl growing into a young woman craving love and relationship, living in an extremely dysfunctional family and in hard circumstances. Set in the 1940's in a British Columbia rural area, the family ekes out a living on their farm, and Beth has a full share of the workload. The story is told as seen through her eyes in a straight forward as it happens fashion and as such does not offer solutions, explanations or even blame, this is a teenager telling about the only life she knows.I found parts of her story heartbreaking but she does not, she does not have any other world to compare hers to and besides that many of the other characters are far worse off than Beth.

The father has a metal plate in his head from the war and is unstable, crude and has problems with anger, he is abusive to his family and workers, and forces himself on Beth sexually.The mother seems even worse to me, for while she loves her daughter, she pretends not to see what is going on with the father, refuses to believe her daughter when Beth is attacked and stripped by other kids at school, and thinks she is faking problems with her arm when Beth is struck by lightning.Perhaps the mother is incapable of protecting Beth as she herself grew up as a victim of incest also.There are a few good relationships, with her brother Dan, and Billy, but most of the people in this novel struck me as bleak and/or ignorant.

Did like the mother�s scrapbook and recipes, also the First Nations people stories were great.Beth�s ability to keep seeking love and ability to see the beauty in nature made me feel she�ll make it out of there one day, would be interesting to see what became of Beth by the time she was 30 or so.

The cure for boredom!
This book is wonderful... The author uses detailed imagery which made me feel as though I was in the thick of the story itself, watching close-by. Like that of the previous reviewer, while I read each page, it felt as though something significant and terrible was on the cusp of occurring. An enjoyable read, The Cure For Death By Lightning will guide you into the rural British Columbia setting and life of fifteen year old, Beth Weeks, a girl who struggles to live a normal life. this proves to be tough, with a father who hasn't been the same since 'the bear incident'; An old-fashioned mother who is undeniably the thread who keeps Beth's father from completely losing it; The neighbors and kids who won't let Beth and her family forget their troubles... and a host of other characters who help make this the heart-felt and compelling read this is.

disturbing and beautiful
I picked this up for a light read, but soon realized I'd judged too quickly from the cover. The Cure for Death by Lightning layers folklore and mythology and the simple pleasures of baking with the gritty realities of family tragedy - of incest, violence, blindness and mental illness- all the while illuminating the strength and inner beauty of Beth Weeks and her growth into a woman.

I read an essay about Jane Austen once that discussed how tragedy, real tragedy, occurs in the setting of the household. It is because they are so close to us and so beloved that our family can be the cause of the greatest hurt. Brother pitted against brother, incest, domestic violence...the household is the centerpiece of tragedy. And if this is so, then Beth Weeks has known more than her fair share of tragedy. And yet, the novel manages to be hopeful without being sentimental, realistic without forgoing beauty.

Reading this book may disturb you, but will leave you with an indelible impression of blue forget-me-nots, the sooty marks of a hand on another, the imagined scent of violets, and the fragrance of fresh-baked pound cake.

Magical Realism, Translated/Transported North
A very interesting first novel by Gail Anderson-Dargatz, just out in quality paperback. It's the story of 15-year-old Beth Weeks, daughter of a farming family in western Canada in the early years of WWII. Along with the commonplace grittiness of their farm life (the endless chores, the birth and death of livestock, the loneliness), there's also the oddities of small-town life, with its eccentrics, tragedies, property feuds, marriages, funerals, and festivals...and given the fact that Beth's dominating, temperamental father seems to be suffering from a combination of depression and psychosis, the Weeks family's popularity is not too high in town just now. There's also a strong undercurrent of Native American spirituality and mythology running through the novel---at times it's the only explanation for an event, unrational as that might sound. One might almost think of this as a Canadian version of a Latin American "magical realism" novel: translate tropic to temperate, jungle to prairie, Spanish heritage to British...The title originates with the scrapbook kept by Beth's mother, a hodgepodge of recipes, Christmas cards, household and family lore, observations, and agonies, a sort of collaged diary of this woman's private life.

I enjoy novels told in first-person narration, if the narrator's voice is an interesting one---and Beth is one of the more interesting voices I've come across lately.

(3.5)Clear and resonant prose, exceptional moments.....
This small novel could be a simple coming-of-age story. Or it could be a more complex structure of Canadian farm life, circa WWII, a small town, reservation Indians and common prejudice, nature's random cruelties and the vagaries of family dynamics.

The Weeks family depends upon one another for all their needs, in a daily battle for survival, caring for sheep and cows, planting fields, and other continuous farm chores, with the help of two hired hands. At a time when most young men have enlisted, the Weeks farms is envied, their son still at home, as well as two young Indian field workers, also of recruitment age. Nearby farms are plagued by marauding coyotes, as well as another"coyote", an animal, according to local lore, that inhabits weak men, causing brutal and barbarous acts against innocent victims, often helpless children. Whether this is fact or rumor, remains a mystery, and no easy explanation is suggested. Further complicating the churning sense of physical and mental exhaustion of farm life is an escalating boundary feud between Beth Week's father and a neighbor, "the Swede".

Beth confronts her own demons and sexual awakening, and discovers an inner core of strength, gleaned from her mother's own stolid self-reliance, a more defined sense of self. Eventually Beth fights off her father's unwanted attentions, and turns her frustration and hate for him into self-determination. He loses the power to stalk her days and nights, as does the frightening specter of the "coyote", a metaphor for the unknown fears we each carry in our hearts, and she resolves to face her fears, refusing intimidation. Some passages actually reminded me of the blunt honesty in To Kill A Mockingbird, recalling the ability children have to look at things (fears) straight on, unflinching. I felt a vague air of threat following me while I read; I found myself anticipating something, on alert. This particular sense added to the flavor of the novel, a kind of edginess I don't often find. ... Read more