Bumblebee Season
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Apr 21, 2026
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
From Eileen Garvin, nationally bestselling author of The Music of Bees and Crow Talk, a heartwarming new story that returns to the vibrant world of beekeeping in a small Oregon town
Beekeeper Jake Stevenson should be celebrating. His fledgling honey farm has been inundated with orders. Instead, Jake is worried. He can’t seem to hire anyone—with local teens more interested in jobs at Hood River’s hip waterfront—and there’s no way he can handle the approaching harvest 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 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. And 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 local rabble rouser begins to rally support to build 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, big-hearted 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Garvin (Crow Talk) delivers a heart-wrenching yet uplifting story of an Oregon beekeeper who joins forces with a PhD student to save the local ecosystem and protect the area's undocumented migrants and refugees. Jake Stevenson, paralyzed below his waist, tends to his honeybees on Mount Hood, where he provides shelter to Mexican teen Flaco Lopez, sent north by his mother to escape the violent cartels ravaging their hometown. Meanwhile, neurodiverse graduate student Abigail Plue has spent her entire life feeling inadequate, until a professor appoints her to research bumblebees in a lab. She's then assigned to organize a field study in the Oregon woods to research endangered species. There, she meets Jake and Flaco, along with Christian firebrand E.W. Dewitt, who's running for Hood River County sheriff as "the godly choice" and vowing to round up "illegals." Dewitt also plans to build a hunting camp that would destroy the bees' habitat. Abigail, Flaco, and Jake each rise to the occasion in satisfying ways, and Garvin gleefully spotlights the characters' resilience ("We neurodiverse folk can teach you neurotypicals a thing or two," Abigail's professor declares). Readers will cheer on the heroes of this winning story. Correction: A previous version of this review misattributed the quote about neurodiverse folk.
