Lost in the Beehive

February 1, 2018
A slightly surreal novel about a young woman reckoning with her buried identity.Every significant moment of Gloria Ricci's life is accompanied by bees: she is stung when her mother loses twin boys and is plunged into a depression, when she marries a man after knowing him only 10 weeks, when that man almost beats her to death. Not only are the bees an alert when something is horribly wrong, they are her connection to her deceased best friend, Sheffield Schoeffler. Gloria and Sheff meet at the Belmont Institute, where they have been sent to be "cured" of their homosexuality, to be "[made] like everybody else." There, they are mistreated and tormented, permanently damaged. After their respective releases, they meet in New York, where Sheff turns tricks for money and becomes increasingly unhinged. One day, they meet Madame Zelda, a Coney Island fortuneteller who tells Gloria why the bees materialize; Zelda reappears often throughout the novel in moments of distress, and Gloria even names her daughter for the fortuneteller. To live her life after Sheff's death, Gloria dissociates; she makes the choices she thinks she's supposed to and carries on repressing her identity until she can no longer stand it. This novel is somewhat banal, even despite the supernatural tilt. Yet while the prose rings hollow, Young-Stone's (Above Us Only Sky, 2015) message is a strong one: do not deny your self.At its heart, this is a meandering, mystical love story.

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February 19, 2018
At age seven, Gloria Ricci, the resilient narrator of Young-Stone’s emotionally rewarding third novel (after 2015’s Above Us Only Sky), is stung by a bee when she finds out her twin brothers didn’t survive their premature birth, and the bees continue to appear at pivotal points, providing a strangely reassuring constant in a life frequently touched by tragedy. In 1965, at age 16, a doomed romance with a girl named Isabel lands her at the Belmont Institute, where doctors plan to “cure” her homosexuality. It’s there that she forms a deep attachment to Sheffield Schoeffler, a young gay man whose pain mirrors her own. After her release, Gloria runs away to New York to live with Sheffield, but she’s devastated when he commits suicide. Years later, she marries the seemingly kind Jacob Blount, moves to rural North Carolina, and endures years of mental and physical abuse at Jacob’s hands. When Gloria befriends the kind, beautiful Betty Jenkins, a local bakery owner, she is enamored, and her quiet desperation becomes quiet agony. Young-Stone addresses themes like self-acceptance and domestic abuse, adding a touch of magic realism. Readers’ hearts will ache for Gloria as she strives for courage, self-realization, and, ultimately, the freedom to love and be loved. Agent: Michelle Brower, Folio Literary Management.

April 1, 2018
Like the characters in Young-Stone's previous novels, most recently Above Us Only Sky (2015), the heroine of her third outing has a unique connection to nature: Gloria Ricci is followed by a persistent swarm of bees, though no one else is aware of them. Coming of age in New Jersey in the 1960s, Gloria is caught in a tryst with a female friend and sent away to an institute to reform her sexuality. There she meets vibrant Sheffield Schoeffler, who convinces her to join him in New York City once they both escape the institute. But when Gloria eventually joins him there, she finds that the extreme experiments he was subjected to have taken a terrible toll. After tragedy strikes, Gloria returns home and gives in to the advances of a young drifter named Jacob, hoping she can escape her own desires and live a conventional life. As the years go by, she chafes under the confines of her destructive marriage, finally realizing what the bees signify and why she can no longer hide from who she is. Young-Stone has spun a romantic and magical yarn.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)