Rennie King married a baseball player, which got her out of small-town life. But a year later, they returned to Spark, Tennessee. Now it’s 1969, the nation is gripped with excitement, and the beehives need tending. BEES IN JUNE contains some magical realism as the gentle working honeybees communicate with their lonely friend. Edging around her discontented husband, Luther, who is known to all as Tiny (I’m thinking that might be the source of his image issues), Rennie sits on the small home porch and stares at the tobacco farm they are renting. She recently lost a premature baby, so she both is and isn’t a mother. The only thing that snaps her out of her grief is thinking a glowing bee wants her to visit her beekeeper uncle, Dixon. The excitement surrounding the upcoming Apollo moon landing is spilling over into town life, with fun offers in stores, cheesecake named after the moon, and more. The Blue Plate Diner’s owner, Arden, offers Rennie part-time work, baking themed pies. This novel way to recreate the summer of 1969 is well worth a read. Rennie finds that her widowed uncle needs help, and he engages a beekeeper, Ambrose Beckett. Of course, any change has to be told to the bees. Luther is really having a tough time, with injury forcing him out of sport early, the hardscrabble farm life, and narrow margins on a cash crop. Unfortunately, he takes his resentment out on his patient wife. Some readers may be unhappy with scenes of domestic violence and jealousy. Rennie needs to become stronger and more independent. Support for women was few, and usually boiled down to other women. BEES IN JUNE by Elizabeth Bass Parman is an interesting women’s fiction novel. I didn’t spend much time on the sections where the bees are planning and whispering; there was enough happening in the main story. It’s hard to call this a romance, but there is a feeling of second chances at life.
Uncle Dixon always told Rennie to tell the bees everything, but somewhere along the way, Rennie forgot. Now, with her life at its lowest, she begins to see the bees in a new light. Will she believe again in the magic of the hives, and will she listen as the bees try to guide her home?
It\'s 1969, and the town of Spark Tennessee, is just as excited about the moon landing as the rest of the country. Rennie Hendricks is grieving and trying to heal from the unimaginable loss of her infant son. She had hoped a child would repair the cracks in her marriage to her husband, Tiny, but the tragedy has only served to illuminate his abusive character. Trying to relieve some of the financial stress that inflames Tiny\'s anger, Rennie accepts a position cooking at the local diner. Hidden away in a kitchen making delicious food, she rediscovers the joy she finds in cooking for others, and as she spends more time with her new boss, she realizes there are more options for women than she thought possible.
One of the benefits of her new job is that she can bring meals to her beloved Uncle Dixon, the man who practically raised her along with her late Aunt Eugenia, a woman unkindly labeled as a witch by most of the town. What those people didn\'t understand is that Eugenia was a healer and connected to power they couldn\'t grasp.
Rennie thinks her elderly uncle is confused when he talks about communicating with his bees, but then she starts to see them glow, leading her toward safety time and time again. Could it be that these bees, discovered long ago by her Aunt Eugenia, are magical and trying to tell her something? And what about the new neighbor, Ambrose Beckett, who seems to understand the bees too. Is he being truthful about why he has moved to Spark, or is there more to him than meets the eye?
Hope-filled and infused with magical realism, Bees in June captures Rennie\'s journey back to her true self, creating a rewarding life that the bees showed her was possible if she only believed in herself and the magic that surrounds her.
Audiobook Narrators- Brittany Pressley, Michael Crouch, and Seth Podowitz.
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