A Recipe for Bees

First US edition. 8vo. Pp. [x], 305, [5]. Quarter-bound olive green cloth over cream paper-covered boards, titled in gilt to spine. Jacket illustration by Jonathan Howell. B/w photographs from the author's own family albums.

Shortlisted for the 1998 Giller Prize. A Globe and Mail Notable Book of 1998. A quirky love story set in the Canadian Prairies, as a woman reflects on her life-long quest for love, independence and the endurance of an extraordinary marriage.

Author's second novel, based on her parents' first marriage. The process of research led them to rekindle their relationship and re-marry, having divorced decades earlier. By the author of The Cure for Death by Lightning (1996). "A bravura work that in several ways recalls Carol Shield's The Stone Diaries. What Gail Anderson-Dargatz has achieved is a commemoration of a lifestyle and a collection of characters that live on when the novel is finished." –The Times Literary Supplement