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"The first time a store manager called about Eva, Miriam had thought it was a mistake." Eva Baruch, 11 years old, has been caught stealing three times. The fourth time, her widowed mother takes drastic action and moves them from their East Village apartment to a small town in Upstate New York. Miriam explains that their new home will allow them a "normal" life; at the root of her decision, however, is a nagging fear that Eva's kleptomania is just the beginning of a bigger problem, "the snag in the stocking that leads to the run, the computer virus (it had happened in the law firm where she worked) that becomes visible too late." The transition is not easy for either of them: Miriam works long hours to support herself and her daughter, while Eva must weather the twin storms of loneliness and impending adolescence. Then Eva meets Burl, a former lawyer who has withdrawn into the isolation of his grandparents' farm to raise bees.
For a while he had sat around cooking up grand plans--a cooperative farm, sustainable agriculture, or a commercial beekeeping operation, maybe even migratory hives that he'd load into a semitruck and drive across the country, following the bloom. Or an ostrich farm. He liked how odd they looked, somewhere between bird and beast, and they were supposed to be the new, low-fat red meat. Sometimes when he let his thoughts wander far enough, he'd had a farming and business partner who was also a mate.
Unfortunately, the woman of his choice has married someone else, he's let the farm go to seed, and now he makes a living writing how-to books and tending his hives as a hobby only. When young Eva comes into his life and begins helping with the bees, however, he is drawn reluctantly into her life and that of her mother.
Elizabeth Graver throws these three isolated people together and then wisely steps out of the way to let them work on each other. As the story moves forward, she allows her characters to look back, gradually weaving in memories that explain Burl's choices and Miriam's fears. Best of all, she avoids the obvious resolutions; instead, The Honey Thief plays out much as life does--messy, painful at times, with no guarantees but plenty of reason to hope. --Alix Wilber
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
A mother and daughter trying to overcome trauma, loneliness and an uncertain future are not a new combination in literary fiction. But in her wise and accomplished novel, Graver navigates the crossroads in her characters' lives with compassion and skill, and tells a story that touches the heart without succumbing to sentimentality or easy answers. After 11-year-old Eva Baruch is caught shoplifting for the third time, her desperate widowed mother, Miriam, decides they must move from their apartment in lower Manhattan to a place where they can start new lives. She finds a job as a paralegal in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, and they move to a farmhouse a distance from the nearest town. Miriam seems competent and self-contained, but she has been frightened since the first year of her marriage to Francis DiLeone, and the facts about her husband's fatal heart attack when Eva was six are revealed only gradually through flashbacks. Miriam is Jewish, while Francis was the son of a fanatically Catholic mother who talks to saints; the specter of inherited mental illness haunts Miriam even as she struggles to support herself and Eva and strives to keep her daughter safe and healthy. Meanwhile, a resentful Eva, suddenly transplanted to a place where she has no friends or resources, visits Burl, a shy, middle-aged loner who has quit his career as a Philadelphia lawyer to retreat to his grandparents' farm, where he raises bees. Burl's kindness and patience in teaching Eva the intricacies of bee-keeping and honey gathering help her to quell the panic attacks that presage her kleptomania, an irresistible impulse to acquire talismans against imagined disasters. When events come to crisis, Graver wisely refrains from resolving them in a neat or romantic closure. Her touch is both subtle and honest, grounded in reality but acknowledging the essence of human striving for companionship and happiness. Her ability to create nuanced, fallible characters who doggedly strive to go on with imperfect lives adds emotional resonance to this touching tale. Readers who enjoyed Amy and Isabelle will welcome the similar sensibility they find here. (Aug.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
