On Bees and Writing

By Linda Avellar

I knew nothing about bees when I started writing this story. I’ve been an amateur gardener at my home in Connecticut for years and always had great respect for bees and the good they do as pollinators. I don’t run and scream when a bee buzzes my head as I’m pulling weeds.

But that was about the extent of it.

The original inspiration for Cassie Linden Finds Her Sweet Spot wasn’t bees at all. The story initially came to me as a way to process what was happening to my father as he struggled with dementia. I felt the powerlessness so many people feel as they watch a loved one become confused, and perhaps angry, and finally lose the essence of themselves. 

My main character, Cassie Linden, has had a difficult relationship with her father and returns home at the urging of her sister (who lives across the country) to check on him. Things aren’t going well. Cassie’s father is having trouble caring for himself (although he won’t admit it) and is in over his head managing his beloved bees. Cassie, who has no use for bees in the beginning of the story, realizes she has to take charge. Against her father’s wishes, she hires a beekeeper to help. 

So where did the bees come from?

I was in my garden one day, noodling the germ of this idea. It didn’t seem enough to write about Cassie coping with her father’s memory issues and her own dilemma about whether to test for the genetic mutation that caused her mother’s early onset Alzheimer’s. Dementia was on my mind, but to be honest, it seemed awfully depressing.   

Often, when I’m digging in my garden my subconscious is hard at work too. I stopped to take a break and watched bees crawling all over my lace cap hydrangeas. Unlike mophead hydrangeas, lace caps have delicate blooms with fertile centers and the bees adore them. I crept close and watched the bees come and go, diving into the blossoms and meandering off laden with pollen. It came to me that perhaps Cassie’s father kept bees as a connection to his late wife. Something they’d wanted to do together but couldn’t because they ran out of time. How would it feel for him to lose the ability to care for the one thing that means so much to him? What would it mean for Cassie to have to step into his world? 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but bees would become central to the story. They represent the way Cassie’s father is trying to hold onto himself and are they are key to Cassie’s journey too.

Cassie lives in New York City and only intends to stay in Connecticut long enough to sort out her father’s care. Her childhood home is too full of memories of her mother’s illness and the reckoning she doesn’t want to face that she might have inherited the same mutation. But when an unexpected shipment of bees arrives, Cassie is forced out of her comfort zone.

From Cassie Linden Finds Her Sweet Spot:

“My bees!” her father said, hurrying out after her. “I forgot they were coming. I meant to order another hive. Now I have nowhere to put them.” He squatted next to the box, peering through one of the small, screened openings.

Cassie squatted next to him, even though the buzzing made her skin prickle. “Can’t you just put them in with the other bees?”

“No.” Her father looked horrified. “There’s a queen. They need their own hive.” He sounded definite about this part. Cassie supposed it was like asking a mother and her kids to move into some other woman’s house. No way was that going to work out. 

“Can’t they stay in here for a while?” They were just bees in a box. It looked pretty much like a hive, just a little smaller. She couldn’t imagine why he needed another hive.

“No, they can’t stay in here. They’ll die. They need to be in a hive.”

“Well, what are you going to do with them?” She knew she sounded cross but couldn’t help it. He’d ordered bees he didn’t remember and now had nowhere to put them.  

He lowered himself to the front step. “Give me a minute. I need to think. I don’t need you nattering at me.” 

The defeat in his voice stopped her. Her mother had begun with incidents like this. Not bees, of course, but the inability to follow through. She would find a recipe then couldn’t make sense of it. Or start telling a story then lose track in the middle. Who knew if her father had Alzheimer’s or run-of-the-mill dementia. It didn’t matter. What mattered was he was losing the ability to think sequentially. He’d seemed almost his old self when he bustled out of the house, excited about the bees. But now he was sitting here dejected, unsure what to do next.

The hives would have to go, that was obvious. He couldn’t take care of bees anymore. But she would need to talk him into it. The bees meant the world to him, a fraying but unshakeable link to her mother. 

The bees, and the enigmatic beekeeper she hires, become the catalyst for Cassie’s growing connection to the natural world and ultimately lead her to question the kind of life she wants to live.  

I did a lot of research into bees—read a dozen books, took an online course and was lucky enough to connect with a local beekeeper, who let me suit up and introduced me to ‘the girls.’ Honeybees are an all-female work force, tirelessly dedicated to the common good, with different jobs depending on their stage of life. The more I learned about bees, the more fascinated I grew. 

Bees became the heartbeat of my story.

In writing and in life, sometimes a moment of marvel can lead us in an unexpected direction. That happened for me with this book. The wisp of an idea that came to me in my garden developed into a central theme of my story. 

Whether or not I ever decide to keep bees, I have a profound reverence for these hardworking, selfless creatures. Bees will always hold a spark of wonder for me—the sweet spot where resilience and tenacity meet the magic of the natural world. 

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Linda Avellar is a former Emmy-nominated TV news reporter who’s always loved a good story. After stepping away from the news business, she found the ideal job working at the public library in Stamford, Connecticut, where she is surrounded by books. 

A Southern California native, she’s lived in Connecticut most of her adult life with her husband, two kids, and a succession of amiable dogs and cranky cats. She is a founding member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, and when she’s not writing, you can find her digging in her garden, hiking with her grown kids in the Pacific Northwest or sailing on Long Island Sound. 

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CASSIE LINDEN FINDS HER SWEET SPOT

  Cassie Linden worries about every word she can’t remember, terrified of the early-onset Alzheimer’s that stole her mother and sent Cassie fleeing the wreckage of her family. Now, recently divorced, she’s back home to care for her aging father, who is struggling with his own memory problems and can’t manage his beloved bees.

      Cassie hires a beekeeper to help while she convinces her father to sell to a developer who’s putting up a luxury project next door. She doesn’t love the idea of her family home being plowed under for McMansions but can’t see another way to pay for the assisted living her dad needs. 

      With the health of his bees at stake, beekeeper Glenn Marsden ardently opposes the development on this last open space in town and is disturbed by rumors that the builder is after the Linden’s five acres too. Ever since his wife walked out eight years ago leaving him to raise their young daughter he hasn’t had much to say to women. But something unexpected has sparked with Cassie.  

    Cassie knows she needs to come clean with Glenn about her plan to sell to the developer but fears it will ruin their blossoming relationship. Then there’s the appointment she forgot and those pesky words she can’t recall. Her sister is after her to get tested for the genetic mutation that guarantees early-onset. But does Cassie really want to know? And will the answer sink her newfound chance at happiness?  

“Warm, intelligent, and steeped with emotion…a gorgeous debut.” – Kristan Higgins, NYT bestselling author

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Amazon link:  https://www.amazon.com/Cassie-Linden-Finds-Sweet-Spot/dp/B0FLYN1HT4

 

 

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers