Julie Carrick Dalton's The Last Beekeeper is a celebration of found family, an exploration of truth versus power, and the triumph of hope in the face of despair. "Fans of Delia Owens will swoon to find their new favorite author.” (Hank Phillippi Ryan) It’s been more than a decade since the world has come undone, and Sasha Severn has returned to her childhood home with one goal in mind—find the mythic research her father, the infamous Last Beekeeper, hid before he was incarcerated. There, Sasha is confronted with a group of squatters who have claimed the quiet, idyllic farm as a way to escape the horrific conditions of state housing. While she feels threatened by their presence at first, the friends soon become her newfound family, offering what she hasn't felt since her father was imprisoned: security and hope. Maybe it's time to forget the family secrets buried on the farm and focus on her future. But just as she settles into her new life, Sasha witnesses the impossible. She sees a honeybee, presumed extinct. People who claim to see bees are ridiculed and silenced for reasons Sasha doesn't understand, but she can't shake the feeling that this impossible bee is connected to her father's missing research. Fighting to uncover the truth could shatter Sasha's fragile security and threaten the lives of her new-found family—or it could save them all. Sasha's journey is a meditation on forgiveness and redemption and a reminder to cherish the beauty that still exists in this fragile world. Also by Julie Carrick Dalton: Waiting for the Night Song A Macmillan Audio production from Forge Books.
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Dalton writes with tension and sincerity that will thrill your soul. This wrenching story of the fate of the bees, and of humanity, reads like a thriller; but has the scholarly chops that set it alongside the finest of literary fiction. The Last Beekeeper set my mind buzzing and my heart rending as I tore through the pages to find a flight of hope.
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Pamela Klinger-Horn, Valley Bookseller