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Author Gail Anderson-Dargatz writes about bees and
premonitions.
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Buzzing About
I wouldn't go so far as to identify bees as Satan's spawn. Well, actually, I would. Any creature that stings, in my book, is not good. Author Gail Anderson-Dargatz, who appears at Joseph-Beth Booksellers Monday, May 21, at 7 p.m., has a different take on God's honey-producers.
"They become kind of like pets. You really get to know them. You have to remain calm or else you get stung, obviously. You have to enter into it in a very calm state," she says.
The subject of bees is one near and dear to the author's heart. Her husband, Floyd, is a beekeeper. It's but one way her life and her novels are interconnected.
Her third book, A Recipe for Bees, centers on Augusta Olsen, a teen-ager on a rural farm who takes up her mother's trade as a beekeeper. It proves to be life-changing for Augusta, who has to cope with a confining marriage, an extramarital affair and some pesky premonitions.
"Writing a novel is such a long-term commitment that you really have to be interested in the subject matter," Anderson-Dargatz says, explaining why aspects of her real life enter into her novels.
Sometimes, the effect is not intentional. In writing her first book, The Cure for Death by Lightning, Anderson-Dargatz created the character of Filthy Billy who suffered from seizures brought on by a brain tumor. The author's husband later suffered the same symptoms as Filthy Billy.
"(Authors) will write about things and have them eerily turn up in their lives. And when we write, it's a very, very subconscious act," she explains. "I don't think it was a premonition, but I do think a part of me was picking up on what was happening."
Enough to send shivers down your spine? But it gets stranger still. Anderson-Dargatz's mother claims to have foreseen the drowning of her own brother. But Anderson-Dargatz isn't convinced that second sight exists. "Most people assume that I'm a great kind of believer. I'm a hopeful skeptic. Most of the premonitions (in A Recipe for Bees) came from stories that my mother told me," Anderson-Dargatz says. "On the other hand, my mother is also a fiction writer, so you can take them with a grain of salt."
Or make them an ingredient in A Recipe for Bees.
contact brandon brady: bbrady@citybeat.com
