Hour of the Bees by Lindsay Eagar

"Once upon a time, there was a tree, living on the shores of a green-glass lake, breathing in hot desert air. Its black branches grew green leaves and snowy flowers, and bees lived in the blossoms. The tree was a gift, protecting the people in the village from injury, aging, disease. Death."

Hour of the Bees is an enchanting tale about several generations of a Mexican-American family with a connection to a magical past, and their struggle to hold fast to their roots.

The novel opens with twelve-year-old Carolina and her family enroute to her grandfather's ranch. Carolina dreads spending the next two months - her entire summer vacation - on her Grandpa Serge's two hundred acre sheep ranch in the middle of the New Mexico desert. Carolina's grandfather has dementia so her father (Raul) and her mother (Patricia) plan on moving him into The Seville, an assisted-living facility in Albuquerque and selling the ranch. Their number one goal this summer is "not to upset Grandpa".

The ranch contains an old barn, a farmhouse that is run down and a dozen boney sheep wandering in a browned pasture. Carolina notes that "there's a black scabby tree stump on the edge of the pasture". Carolina's grandfather, Serge has a thin green oxygen tubes running into his nose, watery blue eyes and pale skin. After Carolina and her one-year-old brother Luis (Lu) are introduced, she stays on the porch to watch Lu and her grandfather. Serge tells her that there has been no rain at the ranch for a hundred years, "and no rain for a hundred years means no bees." He explains that no rain means no flowers and therefore no bees. But Carolina is certain she has seen at least two bees when they arrived.

Carolina's father attempts to convince Serge that they need to move him into a home and sell the ranch to pay for his care at The Seville. This doesn't go over very well with Serge whose relationship with Raul is strained. Raul left home twelve years ago and never returned. Now with the impending sale of the ranch, Serge feels that his son Raul is turning his back on his heritage. Over the next few weeks, Carolina and her family begin cleaning Serge's home and packing up his belongings.

Curious about her grandparents including her deceased grandmother, Carolina questions her father about his parents and his relationship with them. He tells her that Grandma Rosa was stubborn, fiery and adventurous, loving to travel. She died of cancer twelve years ago on Raul's birthday. But he refuses to talk about why he doesn't get along with Serge.

Unlike her father and mother and her older sister Alta, Carolina seems drawn to her grandfather. When she can't sleep one night, after spending time helping her father in the sheep pasture, she sits on the porch with Serge. He tells her there used to be a lake just beyond the ridge near the house. While Carolina believes this is Serge simply exhibiting more "word salad" - random words due to his dementia, Serge insists on telling her a story.

The story is about a boy named Serge and a girl named Rosa who lived in a village. The village was founded in 1480 by a group of Spaniards, in search of gold. Instead of gold they found an oasis, a "green-glass lake" and a huge tree.  The tree was unlike anything ever seen before, having black bark and emerald green leaves. It bloomed all year long, with beautiful, fragrant white blossoms that gave off a "honey-vanilla fragrance". The tree, Father Alejandro told everyone, was a gift. "Bees made colonies in the branches, and like good tenants, they kept the blossoms tidy...The bees kept the whole tree alive." 

Father Alejandro, who accompanied the exploration party, founded the village and built the mission.  They built homes of stone and red desert clay and married the local women, keeping sheep and goats. "Their children and grandchildren built huts of their own on the lakeshore. No one ever left. No one ever died. Those sailors grew old, yes, enough to be called elders of the village., but their aging was slow. They were cheating time."

People were born and aged slowly. Infancy took decades, people grew up and stayed. Whenever someone was hurt, the injury simply healed. In the story Serge tells Carolina, the boy named Serge watched one day as a cut to the bone on his friend Rosa's leg heals instantly. Father Alejandro explained that in the outside world people suffered pain and even death from wounds. But within the village, the gift of the tree made pain and aging impossible. For the young Serge this was a puzzling notion. Nevertheless Serge loved the village and the beautiful tree and he fell in love with Rosa who always seemed so full of life and who always had a cloud of bees trailing behind her.

However, Rosa was restless. Whenever Father Alejandro spoke about his travels, Rosa glowed with excitement. While Serge was content to stay in the village, Rosa was determined to leave it. She seemed to have an insatiable wunderlust."I've had enough of this lake, these stars, this tree,...We've seen everything there is to see here." Serge understood Father's stories, "that the world was the empty clam shell and the tree, the pearl. Nothing outside the village would ever compare with what they had."

Eventually Serge and Rosa married and as a wedding gift, Serge promised to travel with Rosa. But when the time came for them to leave Serge kept postponing their departure until eventually Rosa packed a bag and decided to leave. To keep her safe, Serge made Rosa a bracelet containing the bark of the black tree. Rosa left and did not return for years. But when she did she revealed to Serge the bark from the tree protected her from harm. And this leads Rosa to a decision that changes the course of the village forever.

As the weeks of the summer pass with Carolina spending time with her grandfather and listening to his  story, she finds herself drawn to him. "If it was anyone else, I'd be bored to tears, but when Serge talks, it feels like the only sound. My ears are magnets for his words."  She also begins to understand his connection to the ranch and the land.  Perhaps Serge's story is not just a story after all but the key to Carolina and her family's past and their future. Will they be like Rosa and throw it away or like Serge and remain faithful?

Discussion

In Hour of the Bees, Eagar makes use of the literary device known as a story within a story. In the novel the outer or framing story is about Carolina and her family packing up her grandfather's ranch and helping him make the transition to an assisted living facility in Albuquerque. He has dementia so his random statements about the drought and the lack of bees seem like a symptom of his illness mixed in with his confusion about where he is. There also appears to be a strained relationship between Grandpa Serge and Carolina's father who left the ranch twelve years ago. Grandpa Serge feels that his son has "spit on his roots" and he advises Carolina not to do the same.

Within this story is the second story, a remarkable story about a village where no one ever dies. This gift is tied to a huge black tree with emerald leaves, its roots touching a "green-glass lake". As a result, no one ever leaves the village nor has the desire to leave. That is until Rosa,  who is determined to some day find a way to leave. Her leaving brings about a catastrophe of immense proportions upon the village and its inhabitants who, filled with a desire to see the world, also leave.Their abandoning of their heritage and their gift leads to their demise. The reader is never sure until the very end whether the story is based in reality or part of an old man's imagination and dementia.

Carolina is eager to hear more of the story throughout the summer months, as her bond with her Grandpa Serge grows. Serge is determined to share with her the meaning of the story. He tells her to imagine the beautiful black tree and states, "No matter how far away you are when you bloom, you are always tied to your roots...Your roots are part of you, Caro-leen-a. You must never spit on them."  Serge's story causes Carolina to begin to question her parents decision to sell the family ranch.  Serge tells her, "Some people are afraid of the future. Your father is terrified of the past."

As Carolina hears more of the story she becomes convinced that the story Serge is telling her  is a story about what really happened to the village, the ranch and how the hundred-year drought came about. It is a story about her family's heritage and she's desperate to hear the end of it. From the very beginning of the novel there are hints that the story might actually be based in reality. The reader follows Carolina as she makes discoveries on the ranch that are part of Serge's story. She notes that "there's a scabby black tree stump on the edge of the pasture" and in a foreshadowing of an event in the story, wonders "Whose bright idea was it to chop it down and get rid of the only shade for miles and miles?"  While cleaning out Serge's closet, Carolina and Alta discover all the treasures that Rosa accumulated from her travels. When she questions her father about the items he tells her that only Rosa travelled, just as in Serge's story.  In amongst the treasures, Carolina finds the bark bracelet Serge made for Rosa before she left the village, "Black bard strung onto a leather bracelet... The bark swirls, grains trickling into formation, a cellular wooden waterfall frozen in time. It feels like staring at eternity, looking at this bracelet." It is the one item Carolina chooses from the closet as a keepsake. Carolina also finds an unusual black seed which she decides to plant. Later on she wonders about Serge's story because "So much of his story is stolen from real life." She wonders if Serge was always such a masterful storyteller and if he believes the stories he's telling her.  As Carolina eventually discovers, Serge's story is all too real.

Her time at the ranch changes Carolina's perspective on many things including how she values her Mexican heritage, how her family lives and even how she views the elderly.As a result of her grandfather's story, Carolina is challenged to reconsider how she has rejected in a simple but significant way her Mexican heritage. For example she and her friends have changed their names to hide their Spanish origin but Grandpa Serge urges her to use her full name. "Caro-leen-a...is a beautiful, strong, Spanish name."  Carolina who goes by Carol considers, "My friends Gabby and Sofie are really Gabriela and Sofia, but we don't call them that, not since Manuela Rodriguez...started going by Manny."  Later on when Mr. Gonzalez the real estate agent comes to the ranch, Carolina finds herself telling her mother that her father should care about his history, his family, and his roots. "I'm surprised, too - this sounds nothing like me. Caring about my roots? Worrying about what will happen to this ranch, this land?" By the end of the summer when they do leave the ranch Carolina is distraught that her family is giving up the ranch. The city, once comfortingly familiar now feels strange. "It's loud. Not just the traffic, but the city itself. A million people talking at the same time, no one listening. A million televisions on full blast, no one watching. The humming and buzzing of the bees has been replaced with the sound of electricity...It's deafening." Carolina feels "There's no air in the city." The air is "not real air, not like out in the desert." Her "street is a row of birdhouse, all of us boxed into our own yards by identical picket fences."  Carolina begins to wish she lived in the desert.

Her perspective on her grandfather changes too. At the beginning of the novel she sees her grandfather as "a rusty old man parked on the porch like a leaky, broken-down car." When her sister Alta states that Serge is "like the Crypt Keeper" with "Old-man eyes", Carolina notices "But there's something alive behind them. Like he has X-ray vision to your thoughts." As she goes to help her grandfather with the sheep, Carolina admits that she feels differently about him. "When my parents told me we'd be spending the summer here, I expected to have stiff, forced conversations with this grandfather I'd never met. I expected he'd ask me about school, about my friends, about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I didn't think  he's have anything interesting to say. I didn't think he'd spin a magical story about a tree and a lake and a girl..." Carolina's inward change is mirrored by and outward change too. When she sees herself in the mirror while trying on her new clothing for the upcoming school year, she asks "Who is this girl?"  Her hair "notoriously frizzy but usually tamed by a straightening iron, is a ball of tangled black yarn" and her skin "is leathery with tan", her eyes "sunken into my face with exhaustion, are dull and black". She describes her look as "feral, wild."

By the time Carolina leaves the family ranch she finds herself worrying about "Things like a lonely grandfather who still has a story to finish." When she goes to the Seville with her family, Carolina is shocked at the changes in her grandfather. She recognizes only his blue eyes, and instead sees a person "bloated like a fish with infected gills, chalk-faced, drooling." He is sedated to calm him and unable to talk at all. She is shocked that Serge is locked into the Seville unable to leave for a walk and she fights to see him, for her family to make time in their busy lives for him.

Eagar ties up all the loose ends to craft a touching conclusion to this novel, where Raul is reconciled with both his father and his heritage, where Carolina begins to take pride in her roots and where Alta, black sheep of the family who doesn't share Carolina's roots with Serge, is invited to be a part of their family.  Ironically it is when Carolina begins to accept her family's past and plants the strange black seed that the rejuvenating rains return.

The only drawback to this novel, is the unimaginative, bland cover discouraging young readers from ever cracking the cover. Eagar has crafted a lovely story that deserves a beautiful cover and there certainly was enough material in the story to design something that would draw readers in. What a shame.This is a lovely, unique novel for young readers looking for something very different to read.

Book Details:

Hour of the Bees by Lindsay Eagar
Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press     2016
360 pp.