Eileen Garvin, The Music of Bees (2021)
Content warning:
Animal cruelty, emotional abuse, child abuse, death, discrimination and bigotry, hospitalization, incarceration, mental illness, serious injury, suicidal ideation, violence
Synopsis
The Music of Bees is a contemporary novel that narrates an unexpected friendship between three of the main characters. Alice Holtzman is a 44-year-old widow who bee keeps for fun while working a dead-end job for the County Planning Department. One night, Alice nearly collides with a paraplegic teenager, Jake Stevenson, who shows surprising interest in Alice's bees. She later meets Harry Stokes, a man with social anxiety and had recently moved to Hood River after being released from prison. When crossing paths with one another, Alice invites the boys to work at her honeybee farm, sparking their newly formed friendship. Suddenly, when a new pesticide company, SupraGro, comes to Hood River and threatens the bee population, it is up to Alice and her new friends to bring the community together and save the honeybees. By doing so, the trio eventually creates the unthinkable for themselves: a second chance in life.
"Those long rows of trees were far more than a postcard backdrop for their scenic drives. They were history, part of tradition that was more than one hundred years old. Alice's family was part of that history" - Garvin, The Music of Bees, pg. 22
Essay
The Music of Bees is a story that showcases the magic of finding a second chance and healing through unexpected friendships. Additionally, this novel is about a small community fighting against a pesticide company whose product would likely decrease Hood River's honeybee population. Alice and her friends' victory within this fight, and newfound connections, both make an uplifting novel that depicts a real community in Oregon. What makes the plot of Garvin's novel so moving is not just the fact that Alice finds new friends and brings together the Hood River community to save the bees. Garvin's realistic depiction of Hood River's rural, agricultural community and stubbornness against environmental issues made this novel even more appealing.
For starters, Garvin makes it transparent that many orchardists in this novel do not prioritize the honeybees. A scene that stuck out to me in this novel was the beekeepers' association meeting when Alice and Stan convinced beekeepers and orchardists that SupraGro pesticides would significantly harm the honeybee population. What made their case strong and convincing was not because the orchardists cared about the bees. In fact, Garvin acknowledges why orchardists would want to use SupraGro: the product was more affordable, and they had been aware through "research data" (later revealed to be sponsored by SupraGro) that it was more effective in yielding more fruit. As such, if using SupraGro would improve the orchards, farmers would realistically prioritize their business over the wellbeing of an individual species such as the honeybees.
Alice and Stan's case therefore required them to prove that the decline of the honeybee population would also negatively impact the orchards in Hood River. They were successful in that matter when Stan presented evidence from case studies via the University of California that orchards received an increase in diseased fruit trees and lost nearly half of their fruit production. Both consequences had occurred after the rapid decrease in honeybee population resulting from the SupraGro pesticides. When orchardists were made aware of this evidence, more than half of the people in the meeting agreed to make a request to the county to temporarily ban the use of SupraGro pesticides.
What makes this scene so well written is that Garvin could have easily made the committee members hop on board with Alice's motion to ban SupraGro the moment they learned that the pesticide had a history of harming millions of honeybees across the United States. While this would have also been uplifting, the scenario would not have been realistic if this story was truly set in Hood River. Like many places in Oregon, Hood River has a strong agricultural economy, particularly in apple production. The novel even acknowledges that apple production is the heart of Hood River's community. Therefore, as an agricultural community, the orchards and their business' wellbeing are prioritized over the honeybees. Garvin's overall approach to how Alice and her friends gain support to save the honeybees successfully answers the question orchardists pose: "why should I or my business care about the wellbeing of honeybees?" Answering this question is the appropriate approach to not only Alice's situation, but for any real environmental issue involving agricultural communities such as Hood River.
The Music of Bees seems to accurately depict Hood River's orchards as top priority in their community. Garvin's realistic approach in representing Hood River and their initial unwillingness to risk their orchard businesses in support of the bees exemplify a realistic scenario that many environmental conflicts face in local communities. Regardless, Alice's success in gaining the community's support against SupraGro proves that making an environmental difference within stubborn rural communities is a solid possibility. By depicting this in her novel, Garvin has made The Music of Bees more uplifting to readers.
Author Bio
Eileen Garvin was born and raised in Eastern Washington but is currently living in Hood River, Oregon. She is also a beekeeper herself, a proud caretaker of approximately 120,000 bees in her home backyard! The Music of Bees is her debut novel and has become a national bestseller alongside her second novel, Crow Talk. She has also been interviewed by many popular networks such as Good Morning America and The Washington Post.
Further Reading
Eileen Garvin, How to be a Sister (2010)
- Memoir about Garvin and her sister in the Pacific Northwest
Eileen Garvin, Bumblebee Season (2026)
- Sequel to The Music of Bees, continuing Jake's story