fee HOUR OF THE BEES What does it mean to be fully alive? Magic blends with reality in a stunning coming-of-age novel about a girl, a grandfather, wanderlust, and reclaiming your roots. Things are only impossible if you stop to think about them. ... While her friends are spending their summers having pool parties and sleepovers, twelve-year-old Carolina—Carol is spending hers in the middle of the New Mexico desert, helping her parents get ready to move the grandfather she's never met into a home for people with dementia. At first, Carol avoids prickly Grandpa Serge, But as the summer ‘wears on and the heat bears down, she finds herself drawn to him, fascinated by the crazy stories he tells her about a healing tree, a greeneglass lake, and the bees that will bring back the rain and end a hundred years of drought. As the thin line between magic and reality starts to blur, Carol ‘must decide for herself what is possible—and what it means to be true to her roots. About the book, the author says, “Hour of the Bees was unlike anything I'd ever written before: First person, present tense? Mexican-American characters? Dual narratives, New Mexico setting? All of it, foreign to me. It came out of the loss of a manuscript I'd rewritten seven times, but never got right, Hour of the Bees conquered that loss with a new life, as only a story of a pseudo tree of life could.” Readers who dream that there's something more out there will be enchanted by this captivating novel of family, renewal, and discovering the wonder of the world, > a (On sale March 8, 2016 $16.98 (522.00; ISBN: 978.0-7035-7022-4 368 pages * Ages 10-14 [Aso available as an ebook & CCANDLEWICK PRESS ‘wa candlewickcom Lindsay Eagar lives with her daughter in the mountains of Utah Valley, Utah, Hour of the Bees is her first novel.fois Once upon a time, there was a writer. She had just stowed a manuscript away in a drawer. You know the drawer, every writer has one—a dark, secret drawer where failed stories are cast away or buried, so the writer can be free Once upon a time, the writer had a good, grieving cry, and then she woke up early the next morning, She had paper, and a pen, and an urge to write something, anything, to distance herself from the dead manuscript still taunting her from the drawer. It was a pink June morning, 7 am., and she wrote down a title: Hour of the Bees Who were the bees? What was the hour? She didn't know. Not yet. She wrote a first line: “The bees, chiquita. The bees are coming, Serge calls to me from the porch.” ‘Who was Serge? Why were the bees coming? She didn't know. Not yet. For ten days, the writer walked her rambunctious three-year-old daughter to the park and sat in the shade and filled a notebook. For ten days, she listened to Clint Mansell’s haunting soundtrack for the film The Fountain, and she wrote. In ten days, she had come to the end. rs But she still didn’t know. Not yet. Hour of the Bees poured out of me with quiet, unrelenting force, and I feel like now, at the end of the editing, I'm finally able to understand why I wrote it It comes from my fear of death, the kind of fear that keeps my feet cold at night. Why can’t we just keep on living? 1 often thought Etroas a child, I'm no Peter Pan: death holds no adventure for me. Life, and loved ones, and everything here on earth—this is adventure, and we all have a tiny time frame into which to cram all that adventure Tt comes from my love of tree of life motifs, Every culture has its own version, all of, them beautiful and heartbreaking, Also, my love of trees—twisting willow trees, trees for climbing, fruit trees, autumn leaves gathering beneath, bumpy roots, Christmas trees, dead trees It comes from my weird, twisted idea of romance—what does Rosa love more in Hour of the Bees, Sergio? Or Raul? Or life itself? 1 wrote her, and 1 still don’t know. It comes from so many other things, other influences that I couldn't see until it was finished: Salvador Dali’s surrealism; a phobia of snakes; Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the magical realism genre; the way the Utah desert sunset looks against craggy mountains; ry sister's time working as an aide in an assisted-living facility for dementia patients; the phrase carpe diem; the book Holes by Louis Sachar; trees, trees, trees Sometime during the year between when I finished writing the book and its acquisition by my publisher, I realized what the ultimate source of Hour of the Bees was: the death of my maternal grandfather when I was fourteen, It was my first real experience with death. and the loss of someone so close to me changed how I viewed everything. It might seem strange that I wasn't conscious of this as Iwas writing the novel, but it was such a profound event in my life that it has defined everything else for fifteen years. Hour of the Bees is my response to fourteen-year-old Lindsay: death shouldn't define life, Live life o the fullest and you won't be afraid to die. [hope this message resonates with readers of Hour of the Bees. I hope readers turn the last page and know that even death doesn't stop the huge, great story, of which we are all a part. Once upon a time, there was a writer. She always wanted to be an author. She wrote the book that turned her into one. This is that book, EtroHOUR OF THE BEES © High impact consumer advertising promotions © Extensive trade, school, and library advertising © Regional advertising © Reading Group Choice promotions © National publicity/book review campaign © Targeted trade media publicity campaign ‘© Feature in summer reading roundups © Extensive ARC distribution to key library and educator contacts * Discussion guide © Promotional item available © “Books Worth Blogging About” seasonal galley promotion © Goodreads advertising campaign © Featured title in Candlewick CIRC and Candlewick Classroom e-newsletters © Featured title at library conferences and Spring 2016 Librarian Previews © Bookstore and account pre-publication tour in fall 2015 © Featured author at ALA Midwinter Boston and Winter Institute Denver, January 2016 « Select author appearances upon publication