The Honey Thief

Elizabeth Graver

Miriam uproots her eleven-year-old daughter, Eva, from the high-pressure life of New York City and all that Eva knows, to a quieter, healthier life in the country. Will Eva become less of a wild child? Will Miriam find love again after the death of her young husband (told movingly in flashback)? The story keeps us guessing, yet I found the solitary life of Burl, the honey farmer, the most absorbing.

Extract

Slowly, he thought, now, as he lay sprawled on the couch nursing the mead, slowly he had been making some sort of inching progress with regard to the human world. He didn't do it the way many of his fellow Americans did - no psychotherapy, no happy pills. He had no marriages or children, raises or better neighborhoods to mark the milestones of his life. His progress was unspoken, glacial, unremarked upon by anyone but himself, but still he had arrived somewhere, hadn't he?

Parallels