Of Bees and Mist - by Erick Setiawan (Paperback)

About the Book

Setiawan's atmospheric debut is a beautiful, engrossing fable of three generations of women in two families, their loves and losses, their destructive jealousies and deceptions, and their triumphs.

Book Synopsis

Erick Setiawan's richly atmospheric debut is a beautiful, engrossing fable of three generations of women in two families; their destructive jealousies, their loves and losses, their sacrifices and deeply rooted deceptions, and their triumphs.

Of Bees and Mist is a fable of one woman's determination to overcome the haunting magic that is created by the people she loves and the oppressive secrets behind their broken lives. Raised in a sepulchral house where ghosts dwell in mirrors, Meridia spends her childhood feeling neglected and invisible. Every evening her father vanishes inside a blue mist without so much as an explanation, and her mother spends her days beheading cauliflowers in the kitchen. At sixteen, desperate to escape, Meridia marries a tenderhearted young man. Little does she suspect that his family is harboring secrets of their own. There is a grave hidden in the garden. There are two sisters groomed from birth to despise each other. And there is Eva, the formidable matriarch whose grievances swarm the air like an army of bees--the wickedest mother-in-law imaginable.

Erick Setiawan takes Meridia on a tumultuous ride of hope and heartbreak as she struggles to keep her young family together and discovers long-kept secrets about her own past as well as the shocking truths about her husband's family.

Review Quotes

"Of Bees and Mist is set in a secretive and mythical landscape where readers will yearn to be. A marvel of a novel." - Da Chen, author of Colors of the Mountain and Brothers

"Of Bees and Mist is sheer enchantment. Erick Setiawan has created a magical world just outside of our own, made all the more human and compelling by its rich and astonishing strangeness." - Keith Donohue, author of The Stolen Child and Angels of Destruction

"A beautifully crafted adult fairy tale of love, loss and loyalty that is at once witty, magical, and moving. Of Bees and Mist is a stunningly accomplished first novel." - John Connolly, author of The Book of Lost Things and The Lovers

"A fascinating domestic drama."
--Carolyn See, The Washington Post

"A looping joy to read."
--Denver Post

"A story that pulses with life."
--The San Francisco Chronicle