The Keeper of the Bees

After the Great War, a soldier with a wound that will not heal sets out from a sanatorium with the clothes on his back. At the end of his strength, he arrives at the house of the Bee Master, and is called on to give help as well as receive it.

The book is sentimental, at times improbable, and tends to sermonize, but there is also something magical about it. It is a fairy tale with no overt magic. It reminds me of L.M. Montgomery's books.

Incidentally, after I had finished reading it, I discovered that I had made the wrong assumption about the gender of the author. Readers of the book will know why that is funny.

I've read this book a few dozen times in 35 years and I always love it. The gender stuff is great, the descriptions are very sensory-intense, the moralising isn't disguised as anything else (so I find it easier to digest than when it's "subtle"), and it has a lot of nice things about bees and the sea.

Funny. As I think about it, I have all sorts of complaints about the story - for instance, I think it would have been both a better story and more persuasive if the Christian elements were less preachy. And the Scout Master's efforts would have been more interesting if they weren't an old battle - one that was already well under way then, as evidenced by the final solution being to enroll the child into a Scout camp, where others were doing the same thing more thoroughly. I was utterly puzzled for a little while in the middle, but figured things out long before Jamie did - and I think the Storm Girl was overreacting, if Jamie was right about her plans. It wouldn't have solved the problem at all, just gotten her out from under it. (There show more are multiple puzzles running through the story, and I'm trying not to spoil them.)
But with all that said - a wonderful story. It had me crying at several points, and laughing aloud at others. Jamie is great, and so is the Scout Master; Molly and the Bee Master and Margaret; everyone is beautifully drawn and realistically portrayed (as I expect from Gene Stratton-Porter). There's a lot of unlikely situations and coincidences, but none that really stretched my suspension of disbelief. And, as usual, the descriptions of Nature are absolutely gorgeous. And not a perfect happy ending, but a good solid one - and it makes a very good beginning, too. I enjoyed the book quite a lot, and now I want to reread all my other Stratton-Porters. show less

Too puritanical about a woman's role (but expected for that era). Nice tidbits about raising bees, tho.
[read 2001-18 yr ago]

Broken in spirit and body, James Lewis MacFarland, a wounded veteran of World War I, decides to escape from the military hospital before he is sent to a hospital for tubercular patients. He sets out on a great adventure which takes him to the healing sun and ocean of California.

Recommended by Ezri Kremer