Augusta Olson has the gift of second sight. As a teenager growing up on a rural farm she foresaw that her mother would die in childbirth. She could not predict that her own marriage to a taciturn sheepfarmer would prove so confining (or her father-in law so very ornery), but Augusta is feisty and unbowed, finding independence in work, friendships, motherhood, and a love affair that will reverberate throughout her life. But it is when she takes up her mother's craft of bee-keeping that her life -- and even her marriage -- is unexpectedly transformed.

A rich immersion in the sensory world of life on a farm, and steeped in the emotional cross-currents of a lifetime, A Recipe for Bees is a wise novel full of vitality, good humor, and great charm.