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Bee Summers

by Melanie Dugan

This coming-of-age novel by Melanie Dugan follows 11-year-old Melissa, abandoned by her mother and left in the care of her father, an emotionally distant handyman and beekeeper who has little choice but to take her along on his travels.

It’s clear from the outset that all is not right with the Singer family. Set in the eastern U.S., the novel begins in Somerfield, Pennsylvania, in the spring of 1966. The story is told from the point of view of Melissa, whose name (as she later finds out from Earl, her father’s friend and fellow Korean War veteran) is derived from melissae, Latin for bees. The evocative opening scene, which features bees finding their way into the family’s kitchen, has an ominous tone, one that is sustained throughout the novel.

Tellingly, much of the action takes place either in darkness or indoors, and trust issues and a pervasive sense of isolation develop amid a perplexing lack of communication. Melissa’s father, while always kind, doesn’t explain why her mother left or where she went. Days after the mother’s abandonment, he wakes Melissa in the middle of the night and tells her to pack, explaining that night is the best time to transport bees; the ensuing dialogue is both strange and unnatural. Melissa struggles to interpret overheard scraps of conversation and innuendo without any illumination from her father or anyone else. These failures to communicate become more believable as events unfold.

The sharp contrast between Melissa’s first-person observations and depth of thinking in the novel’s first half compared with what follows lends an unevenness that, nevertheless, corresponds with her growth and quality of life (the book covers a span of 16 years). The complexities of trauma complicate Melissa’s quest to understand the truth behind her mother’s disappearance; the problem of post-traumatic stress disorder, poorly understood and not classified as such at the time, is central to the narrative, and late scenes involving confrontation and loss are moving and effective. Overall, Bee Summers is a carefully wrought portrayal of the way we carry trauma with us through life.

 

Reviewer: Brenda Schmidt

Publisher: Upstart Press

DETAILS

Price: $16.95

Page Count: 192 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 978-0-98806-275-7

Released: May

Issue Date: June 2014

Categories: Fiction: Novels