Hour of the Bees

Carolina walks a fine line between reality and magic, a state of mind many a struggling child understands.

Stuck with her grandfather, whose mind is failing, she finds a special connection to the fantastical stories he tells of a lake and bees and a tree, all connected with love of family and one’s roots. She forms a special bond with her “crazy” grandfather.

His stories about the tree with the magical power to bring people back together especially rings true. Who doesn’t believe in the magic of trees, especially old trees with deep roots (I still do). When Carolina rescues… show more.

I am a retired sixth grade English teacher, and when I discovered this book, I knew my students would love it. Carolina is a 12-year-old girl who must leave her friends behind for the summer so that she and her family can move her elderly grandfather, Serge, to a nursing home. He lives in Albuquerque, and he talks about her late grandmother in mystical flashbacks that involve bees, a magical tree, and her grandmother’s wanderlust. Serge is an unreliable narrator because he has dementia, yet Carolina discovers clues that his crazy stories may be true. And even though I read… show more.

Honeybees hold a mysterious power in this beautifully written novel about a girl’s struggle to connect with both her cultural roots and her grandfather with dementia during a summer in the New Mexico desert. As a former Middle School teacher, I loved how perfectly Eagar captured Carolina’s struggles with family and friends. I was enchanted by Grandpa’s Serge’s tale about a tree once kept alive by bees, and couldn’t take my eyes off the page as story strands merged in a powerful and suspense-filled climax. The image of bees each bringing a mouthful of water to replenish a drought-erased lake… show more.

Hour of the Bees is a mix of realism and fantasy, of not exactly knowing what is true versus what is imagined, which in a way, describes Alzheimer’s. Carolina and her family travel to the New Mexico desert to move her Grandfather into a home for people with memory loss. Grandpa Serge hasn’t completely lost his memory, so in some ways it is up to the reader to decide if the magical tale he tells about a tree, bees, a green-glass lake, and his dead wife Rosa is real or imagined. It is a story of love and loss, of… show more.