by Gail Anderson-Dargatz
Recommended by Alan Bradley
The Amnesty International Book Club is pleased to announce our January/February 2017 title, A Recipe for Bees, by Gail Anderson-Dargatz. This title has been recommended by guest reader Alan Bradley, bestselling author of the Flavia de Luce mystery series. In this guide, you’ll find Alan’s considerate reflection upon the story of Augusta Olson, as well as discussion questions, as well as discussion questions, an Amnesty background section, and an action you can take.
A Recipe for Bees is a gently immersive novel that brings you into the past and present life of Augusta Olson as she anxiously awaits the news of her son-in-law’s brain surgery. Through her reflections and daily rural life, the reader experiences touches of magic and bee lore, as well as character insights and the rekindling of romance. It is a novel that will trigger you to not only enjoy the world created by Anderson-Dargatz, but also pause between chapters and consider your own life’s journey and influences.
Click below to download the discussion guide.
About Alan Bradley
Alan Bradley was born in Toronto, Ont. and grew up in the pleasant lakeside town of Cobourg, Ont. After a long career in television broadcasting, he took early retirement from the University of Saskatchewan to write fulltime. He has published many children’s stories as well as lifestyle and arts columns in Canadian newspapers. His adult stories have been broadcast on CBC radio and published in various literary journals. He has also written several screenplays and taught university-level courses in screenwriting. He was the recipient of the first Saskatchewan Writers Guild Award for Children’s Literature. After writing for several years on the Maltese island of Gozo, Alan Bradley now lives in the Isle of Man.
About the Author
Gail Anderson-Dargatz
Gail Anderson-Dargatz has been published worldwide in English and in many other languages in more than fifteen territories. Her latest book, The Spawning Grounds, is her first literary novel since the 2007 bestseller Turtle Valley.
Her first novel, The Cure for Death by Lightning, met with terrific acclaim and was a finalist for the prestigious Giller Prize. This international bestseller also won the UK’s Betty Trask Award, the BC Book Prize for Fiction and the VanCity Book Prize, and was a finalist for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award.
Gail’s second novel, A Recipe for Bees, was again a finalist for the Giller Prize and was nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. A Rhinestone Button was also a bestseller and Gail’s first book, The Miss Hereford Stories, was a finalist for the Leacock Medal for Humour.
Anderson-Dargatz’s fictional style has been called “Margaret Laurence meets Gabriel García Márquez” because her writing tends towards magic realism, but she says the magic in her writing arises not from literary influences, but from family stories of the Thompson Shuswap region, which she carefully transcribed.
“My father passed on the rich stories about the region I grew up in, which he heard from the Shuswap men he worked with. And my mother told me tales of ghosts, eccentrics and dark deeds that haunted the area.”
