NECTAR

A sluggishly paced debut, Maine-set, tells what price a woman is prepared to pay to keep the family farm—a price that includes lies, betrayal, and even murder.

Chapters are prefaced with quotes from beekeeping lore to underline the role of central character Regina Merritt Gilley, a woman of strong appetites and will whose Maine is not a picturesque tourist destination but a place of dark forests, long winters, and pervasive poverty where farmers struggle to wrest livings from poor soil. The story opens in 1956, as Caleb Gilley (one of the narrators) helps Regina bury Duffy, the old man who has lived with Ginny all Caleb’s life and whom Caleb thinks may be his real father. Ginny recalls her own childhood on the farm, back when her father sexually abuses two older sisters until one fights back and hits him with a shovel. Ginny also recalls her great pride at being entrusted with her father’s hives, and how over the years she was to grow into an outstanding beekeeper. At school, she falls in love with classmate Duffy, but, determined to find a man wealthy enough to improve the farm, marries Harry Gilley, an affluent visitor. She gives birth to two daughters and tricks her ailing father into believing the elder girl is a boy so that he’ll leave the farm to “him” in his will. Over the years, Harry becomes an alcoholic, Ginny barters sex for money, lies to her children, and murders a man whose presence is inconvenient—all to make sure that the farm remains hers. Still, Duffy is the only man she’s loved, and, mourning him, she finally tells Caleb the surprising truth about his parentage.

A gothic plot with literary ambitions—but also with a protagonist whose chillingly monstrous behavior makes sympathy out of the question.