Beekeeping farm thriller
March 24th, 2022
Melissa Makepeace struggles to run the family farm in Mad Honey (Wolsak & Wynn $22), the debut novel of Kamloops-based Katie Welch. At the age of eleven, Melissa’s father had suddenly left the family and then a dozen years later Melissa’s lover and the man she hired as her beekeeper, disappears too. To get over her grief, Melissa turns her troubled mind to the farm and lists of chores such as: “harvest pears and tomatoes, clear out bean rows, check on the chickens, feed the goats and the donkey, get an oil change on the truck, clean up the outdoor canning kitchen, go over the farm financials, and on, and on.” But her lover returns, suffering from a kind of amnesia and no idea what day it is. In this beekeeping farm thriller, Melissa begins to unravel the mystery, which might also reveal what happened to her father. Will the farm survive? And how will Melissa handle bee colony collapse? Katie Welch holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Toronto and her short stories have been published in EVENT, Prairie Fire, The Antigonish Review, The Temz Review, The Quarantine Review and elsewhere. 978-1-989496-52-7
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