From the unforgiving farmland of rural Maine comes a story of love and sacrifice, of family tragedies and obligations, and of the mysterious healing power of bees.
David Fickett’s Nectar crosses three generations of beekeepers to tell the story of Regina Merritt, a determined woman who is forced at a young age to choose between happiness and survival. Her remarkable life is recounted with the help of the many people affected by that decision: a husband, who fails in every attempt to win her love, and loses everything in the process; a daughter, uncomfortably aware of her mother’s weaknesses, who is forced, in her darkest moment, to rely on the empathy of the woman she sought to hurt; a lover, denied in near-childhood, who never fails to provide protection and hope to the woman who denied him; and a son, left to his own devices by a mother with little love left, who yearns to solve the mysteries of his childhood and of the woman who is both his deepest connection and his worst enemy. Haunting and poignant, Nectar is a novel that will stay with you long after the last page is read.
