Starting Over: A Country Year and A Book of Bees

Sue Hubbell

Apr 2018 · Open Road Media

About this eBook

A pair of memoirs about a woman starting her life over as a beekeeper in the Ozarks, from “a latter-day Henry Thoreau with a sense of the absurd” (Chicago Tribune).
 
Taken together, the “steadily eloquent” national bestseller, A Country Year, and its follow-up, A Book of Bees, a New York Times Notable Book, offer a moving and fascinating chronicle of Sue Hubbell’s seasonal second life as a commercial beekeeper (The Washington Post).
 
Alone on a small Missouri farm after the end of a thirty-year marriage, Hubbell found a new love—of the winged, buzzing variety. Left with little but the commercial beekeeping and honey-producing business she started with her husband, Hubbell found solace in the natural world, as well as in writing about her experience. In evocative vignettes, she takes readers through the seasonal cycle of her life as a beekeeper, offering exquisitely rendered details of hives, harvests, and honey, while also reflecting on deeper questions. As the New York Times wrote: “The real masterwork that Sue Hubbell has created is her life.”

Ratings and reviews

Hubbell writes of life's big and small moments with equal attention. Her enjoyment of both serious and absurd things, written in clear, straightforward prose, makes all her books a delight.

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About the author

Sue Hubbell (1935–2018) was the author of eight books, including A Country Year and New York Times Notable Book A Book of Bees. She wrote for the New Yorker, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Smithsonian, and Time, and was a frequent contributor to the “Hers” column of the New York Times.