The Hive - by Melissa Scholes Young (Paperback)

About the Book

The Hive is a story of survival, sisters, and secrets. The Fehler family's four daughters and their newly widowed, doomsday prepper mother struggle to keep their pest control business from bankruptcy during a recession. Set in a racially and politically divided rural Midwestern town during the Obama years, The Hive shows feminism rising from rural roots.

Book Synopsis

The Hive is a story of survival, sisters, and secrets. The Fehler family's four daughters and their newly widowed, doomsday prepper mother struggle to keep their pest control business from bankruptcy during a recession. Set in a racially and politically divided rural Midwestern town during the Obama years, The Hive shows feminism rising from rural roots.

Review Quotes

"You'll buzz through The Hive, Melissa Scholes Young's vibrant second novel about a close family and their closely held secrets . . . A loving portrait of a family that closes ranks even as it opens its heart." -Mary Kay Zuravleff, author of Man Alive!

"I love books about sisters, and I love The Hive, which has all the eccentricity and yearning of some of my favorite sister stories, like We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson and Sisters by a River by Barbara Comyns. From the very first chapter, The Hive is a deft, delightfully weird, and often comical family saga." --Timothy Schaffert, author of The Perfume Thief

"The Hive [is] the kind of authentic and deeply felt novel that could only be crafted from personal experience . . . Melissa Scholes Young gracefully and compassionately captures the moving story of four young women seeking out their own independence while drawn, inexorably, back, and back again, into the family business." --Dean Bakopoulos, author of Summerlong

"I love when an author takes me someplace I've never been. Much like an epic Jane Smiley novel, Melissa Scholes Young transports us to rural America, inside a family-owned pest control business and four sisters' struggle to keep it afloat in a changing political landscape. The Hive is a moving and completely immersive reading experience." --Marcy Dermansky, author of Very Nice

"The Hive by Melissa Scholes Young is real and raw and will pin you back in your seat. It's a powerful portrait of a family coming to terms with a changing world that some are ready for, and others are not. The Fahler family is beautifully rendered in their messy complexity―flawed, tragic, and hopeful, all at once. I loved it." --Alex George, author of The Paris Hours, owner of Skylark Bookshop

"The Hive has so many things that readers look for in a novel--great characters and musings on family dynamics, feminism, and grief. The sisters will stay with you long after you make the journey with them to break free, take adventures, accept risks, make choices, have hope. Kudos to Melissa Scholes Young. The Hive is the family saga I have been waiting for." --Pamela Klinger-Horn, Valley Bookseller

"Filled with the messiness of family emotions and presumptions, along with the age-old question of 'Who do I want to be, and how do I fit in?' this sweet and delightfully quirky novel will draw you in and not let go." --Betsy Von Kerens, The Bookworm Omaha

"The Hive is a rich and complex family narrative . . . Imperfect, real, and true-to-life characters are presented in a page-turning story line that book clubs will devour!" --Mary Webber O'Malley, Skylark Bookshop

"I know a book is good when I wake up at 4 a.m. on a Sunday and pick up where I left off . . . a front row seat to the challenges women face in a small town in Midwest America." --Shelf Unbound

"Readers won't easily forget the voices of the Fehler women." --Portland Book Review

"The Hive puts a finger on what American media has been chasing since the Tea Party formed and through Donald Trump's term as president: small-town Midwest Americans' motivations . . . What carries The Hive more than the themes and the characters is the gorgeousness of the prose. Scholes Young invites us into the Fehler family dynamic and the fascination of white Midwestern lifestyles with potent language