Q&A with Elizabeth Bass Parman

 

 

Elizabeth Bass Parman is the author of the new novel Bees in June. She also has written the novel The Empress of Cooke County. She lives in Nashville.

 

Q: In our previous Q&A, you said, “When writing The Empress of Cooke County, I included a cameo from two minor characters to use as the focus of Book 2.” What is the relationship between that novel and your new book?

 

A: I briefly mentioned two characters, Rennie King Hendrick and her uncle, Dixon King, in The Empress of Cooke County, which is set in 1966. I think it’s fun to recognize characters from an earlier book, so I wanted my readers to have that experience.

 

In The Empress of Cooke County, Rennie is falsely accused of something, which foreshadows the tough life she is going to be dealing with in Bees in June. I also mention Dixon’s deep connection to the natural world, and that bond is a cornerstone of the second novel.

 

I also include several secondary characters from the first book in Bees in June, including Arden, the Blue Plate Diner’s owner, and Evangeline, who works at the Curly Q beauty shop. Readers may also remember Darlene from The Empress of Cooke County, who continues to always say exactly the wrong thing.

 

Rennie and her uncle are the two main characters of Bees in June, which is set against the first moonwalk in the summer of 1969. Although the two books are both set in the fictional town of Spark only three years apart, they are very different novels.

 

The Empress of Cooke County focuses on a dysfunctional relationship between a mother and daughter, while Bees in June is a hope-filled story about a young woman, Rennie, who learns to trust the quiet magic within her as she navigates a difficult life.

 

The primary relationship in The Empress of Cooke County is adversarial, while the bond between the two main characters in Bees in June, Rennie and her uncle, is nurturing and uplifting.

 

Q: The writer Brooke Lea Foster called the novel a “tribute to the human spirit and one woman's desire to remake herself...” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I am very honored to have such a lovely blurb from Brooke. Her description sums up what I was trying to do in this story, which was to take a woman who is so broken and show, with belief in herself and a little help from friends–both human and not—that her most heartfelt wishes for a better life can come true.

 

I throw a lot of tough things at Rennie, but she navigates them all, and ends up with a life even better than the one she dared to imagine for herself. That theme is the reason I chose to set the book against the first moon landing. So many people thought it would be impossible, yet it happened.

 

Q: Did you need to do any research to write the book, and if so, did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: The idea for the book actually originated from researching something that intrigued me while I was scrolling social media. I read an article in a newspaper about a swarm of bees that flew to their keeper’s funeral and then returned to their hives after the service. It was presented in a matter-of-fact way, only noting that the keeper “had a way” with bees.

 

Of course I started looking into this, and discovered the symbiotic relationship between bees and their keepers. What I found most intriguing was the custom of “telling the bees,” which involves updating your hives about important family happenings.

 

The tradition dates back hundreds of years, and has very precise rules, such as knocking three times on the roof of the hive before making your announcement, and draping a black mourning cloth or ribbon around the hive if a death has occurred.  When I thought about talking to bees, I wondered what would happen if the bees talked back, and Bees in June was born.

 

I researched bees, of course, and was amazed by so many things. For example, a bee makes only 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime. I included that fact in the story, but the most interesting thing I learned is about crows.

 

They are very smart, which I knew, but I did not know they can hold a grudge for 17 years, and can pass down their low opinion of a human to their descendants. The lesson here is not to make a crow angry!

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?

 

A: I want readers to take away the feeling of optimism. I feel the world is a pretty tough place right now, with bad news of all kinds assaulting us at every turn.

 

Bees in June acknowledges difficult things are a part of life, but so are magical, beautiful things. I want readers to see they can and should search for the good parts of life, which are just as real as all the grim reports we’re seeing on the news every day.

 

Rennie has a swarm of magical bees to bring light to her life, both literally and figuratively, and I hope Bees in June makes readers want to search for what can bring light to their own lives, even in their darkest times.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I have left Spark (for now) and am writing a contemporary story about a songwriter in Nashville who finds out after the death of her husband that the life she thought she was leading is not at all what is really going on.

 

She slowly uncovers the truth, about her own life and must figure out how to gain back all those things she thought she already had, but for real.

 

I am lucky to live in Nashville, and am talking with amazing songwriters and other music professionals to make sure the details are “pitch perfect.”

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I do want to alert readers to a couple of content warnings. The book opens shortly after the death of Rennie’s premature son, and there is domestic violence on the page. Despite these grim topics, though, the book is sweet and hopeful.

 

I will always have a rescued dog in my books, and the one in Bees in June, named Jane Austen, has her life threatened at one point in the story. Although I give the dogs tragic back stories, no harm ever comes to them on the page, and they will always end up with their own happily ever after.

 

I am on a book tour for Bees in June, and would love readers to come to one of my events so I can say hello in person. My tour schedule is on my website under Events, at www.elizabethbassparman.com. They can also follow me on Instagram at @elizabethbassparman.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Elizabeth Bass Parman.