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irishcoda 's review for:
The Last Beekeeper
by Julie Carrick Dalton
Light spoilers ahead
Imagine a world in which all the bees everywhere would die. What would that look like?
The Last Beekeeper by Julie Carrick Dalton shows us a near-future or alternate world where that has happened.
I have read many articles in the last few years about the declining population of bees. If there are no bees to pollinate them, flowers and vegetables won’t grow. If they don’t grow, there’s no food. Pesticides are mostly to blame. When I saw this book at the library, I grabbed it and checked it out.
Sasha Severn is the daughter of a man notoriously labeled “The Last Beekeeper.” Sasha grew up in a remote area with two loving parents who were also survivalists, conservationists, and scientists. She spent her early years helping her father tend to the bees in his care. Soon, she had hives of her own and developed a deep communing relationship with them.
Tragedy came with the death of her mother due to cancer, and the contagion beginning to spread among beehives all over the world. As Sasha coped with her grief, her father became distracted and spent hours away from her. He would go into his underground shelter, writing down information in journals.
There came a time when Sasha helped her father move the hives to hidden locations. They successfully moved her hives into the forest when government agents arrived to confiscate all of her parents’ hives. Sasha didn’t understand and her father just said cryptically that bees were dying all over the world and our government wanted to control what was left of the country’s bees.
When Sasha was 11, her father suddenly and inexplicably had her help him move her bees back inside a building on their property. All she knew was that there was increasing pressure on her father to reveal his research and to surrender any remaining bees.
Soon after, there was a tragic accident and Sasha’s bees were released into the wild. Her father was arrested, tried, and sent to prison for refusing to give up his journals and for hoarding bees secretly.
Sasha went into foster care.
Ten years later, she returns to her home because she wants answers. What was so important about her father’s research that he’d hidden in a secret underground bunker? Why was that research more important than caring for her?
Life is unpleasant now without the bees. There is widespread hunger and unemployment. Fruits and vegetables have to be hand pollinated, and there is never enough to go around. Many people have become drifters or squatters in abandoned homes.
There is an added mystery: people who have claimed to have seen a bee recently are disappearing. Why?
To find out if Sasha learns the truth about her father’s journals and what happened to the bees in her care, you have to read the story. It’s very engaging as much as it is a little worrisome.
Is that our future?
Imagine a world in which all the bees everywhere would die. What would that look like?
The Last Beekeeper by Julie Carrick Dalton shows us a near-future or alternate world where that has happened.
I have read many articles in the last few years about the declining population of bees. If there are no bees to pollinate them, flowers and vegetables won’t grow. If they don’t grow, there’s no food. Pesticides are mostly to blame. When I saw this book at the library, I grabbed it and checked it out.
Sasha Severn is the daughter of a man notoriously labeled “The Last Beekeeper.” Sasha grew up in a remote area with two loving parents who were also survivalists, conservationists, and scientists. She spent her early years helping her father tend to the bees in his care. Soon, she had hives of her own and developed a deep communing relationship with them.
Tragedy came with the death of her mother due to cancer, and the contagion beginning to spread among beehives all over the world. As Sasha coped with her grief, her father became distracted and spent hours away from her. He would go into his underground shelter, writing down information in journals.
There came a time when Sasha helped her father move the hives to hidden locations. They successfully moved her hives into the forest when government agents arrived to confiscate all of her parents’ hives. Sasha didn’t understand and her father just said cryptically that bees were dying all over the world and our government wanted to control what was left of the country’s bees.
When Sasha was 11, her father suddenly and inexplicably had her help him move her bees back inside a building on their property. All she knew was that there was increasing pressure on her father to reveal his research and to surrender any remaining bees.
Soon after, there was a tragic accident and Sasha’s bees were released into the wild. Her father was arrested, tried, and sent to prison for refusing to give up his journals and for hoarding bees secretly.
Sasha went into foster care.
Ten years later, she returns to her home because she wants answers. What was so important about her father’s research that he’d hidden in a secret underground bunker? Why was that research more important than caring for her?
Life is unpleasant now without the bees. There is widespread hunger and unemployment. Fruits and vegetables have to be hand pollinated, and there is never enough to go around. Many people have become drifters or squatters in abandoned homes.
There is an added mystery: people who have claimed to have seen a bee recently are disappearing. Why?
To find out if Sasha learns the truth about her father’s journals and what happened to the bees in her care, you have to read the story. It’s very engaging as much as it is a little worrisome.
Is that our future?