Author Eileen Garvin

COMMUNITY News:

Join author Eileen Garvin at 6 p.m. Monday, May 18, at the Los Alamos Nature Center for a reading and a discussion of her latest novel Bumblebee Season, a heartwarming new story that returns to the vibrant world of beekeeping in a small Oregon town.

Bumblebee Season will be available for purchase at Samizdat Bookstore after April 21 and at the event.

A resident of Oregon, Garvin lived in New Mexico for eight years and was the managing editor for New Mexico Business Weekly during that time. She also completed a Master of English Language and Literature at the University of New Mexico, where she taught composition classes.

Her novel is about a beekeeper named Jake Stevenson. After winning a prestigious culinary award, his fledging honey farm has been inundated with orders. But as he approaches his largest harvest ever, Jake is worried. He can’t seem to hire any helpers, and there’s no way he can do it all by himself no matter how adept he’s become at maneuvering among the beehives in his wheelchair.

Meanwhile Flaco López, a young migrant from Mexico, is lost on Mount Hood—hungry, scared, and alone—when he stumbles upon Jake’s beehives in a high alpine meadow. As Flaco takes refuge on Jake’s farm, they begin to form a tentative friendship. The two soon cross paths with Abigail Plue, a scientist more interested in insects than people, who’s on Mount Hood studying a threatened native bumblebee.

Then a divisive sheriff’s candidate begins to intimidate the local immigrant community and champion plans for a commercial hunting camp that would destroy Mount Hood’s pristine wilderness—the home of Jake’s honeybees and Abigail’s beloved bumblebees. And Jake, Abigail, and Flaco must come together to protect everything they hold dear. Full of warmth, bighearted characters, and a celebration of nature in all its complexity, Bumblebee Season reminds us that human connection might just be the most powerful force there is.