What is the title of your latest release?
BUMBLEBEE SEASON
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
BUMBLEBEE SEASON tells the story of three strangers who connect over the fate of wild bees in a small town in Oregon.
Beekeeper Jake Stevenson should be celebrating as he faces a huge honey harvest. But he can’t seem to hire any helpers and can’t do it alone no matter how adept he’s become at maneuvering among the beehives in his wheelchair.
Jake meets Flaco López, a young migrant from Mexico, who is hungry, scared, and lost when he stumbles upon Jake’s beehives in a high alpine meadow. The two soon cross paths with Abigail Plue, a scientist more interested in insects than people, who’s studying a threatened bumblebee.
When a divisive sheriff’s candidate threatens local immigrants and champions plans to destroy the meadow, the three must come together to protect everything they hold dear.
Bumblebee Season is a story about honeybees, bumblebees, and human migration, but at its heart, it’s about the search for home and belonging.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
The story takes place in the town of Hood River, Oregon, where I live. It’s a beautiful place full of mountains, forests, and rivers. I love living here, and it feels natural to write about it. Also, BUMBLEBEE SEASON follows up on my first novel, The Music of Bees, which was also set here, so it was a practical choice.
Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
Totally! I would want to help Abigail in her search for the threatened western bumblebee. Because I have almost no experience in the sciences, she’d be completely impatient with me. She’d need to explain everything over and over again, which would annoy her. But I would always bring fresh baked goods with me. I love to bake and she loves cookies, so I’m sure it would work out.
What are three words that describe your hero?
I have two heroes and one heroine: My heroes are a twenty-something beekeeper and a fourteen-year-old geography buff. I’d describe Jake, the first, as wounded, resilient, and funny. Flaco, in his mother’s words, is smart and brave. But he’s also really homesick for everything he’s left behind in Mexico, including his mom. Abigail, a twenty-something graduate student, is prickly, intelligent, and lonely.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I learned so much about bumblebees. Here’s just one little tidbit: Bumblebee queens overwinter by themselves. They find a warm place to hibernate and settle in for the season. When spring comes, each emerges alone to look for a spot to build her nest and start her colony from scratch. Until she can forage, she feeds herself with honey she’s stored in her crop all those cold months. They are self-sufficient, strong survivors!
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I don’t think revision can be separated from writing. I do try to write straight through something, but when I go back through it, usually the next day, I start changing things, rearranging, adding, and subtracting. There is continuous polishing going on throughout the whole process. When a draft is ready for my editor, she and I will go through a couple of versions together making big changes and then smaller ones. There is also a copyedit and a proofread. It’s sort of endless! I love all of it.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Beautiful soft cheese.
Describe your writing space/office!
My writing space is a small room in the darkest, coldest part of my house. Left to my own devices, I would probably be working just fine with planks on cinderblocks. However, my spouse loves to decorate. He built a desk for me out of an old door and made it the right height for me (I’m short and most desks are too tall.) He put a glass top on it so I can slide photos underneath. It’s a like a giant scrapbook I get to look at every day. He’s also collected antique office items – a lamp, books, a stapler, an armchair. He hung up all the pictures I love. He’s created quite a beautiful space for me to work in.
Who is an author you admire?
Sandra Cisneros. Reading her essays as a young person in the 1990s opened my eyes to feminism and women writers of color. She’s also terrific novelist and a great public speaker – smart, generous and funny.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Yes. QUIET: THE POWER OF INTROVERTS IN A WORLD THAT CAN’T STOP TALKING by Susan Cain.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
BUMBLEBEE SEASON is my fourth book and my third novel. When I got the call from my agents that the book had sold, I was at the start of a book tour for my second novel, CROW TALK. So I was doing interviews and presentations, traveling and meeting people for that book. All the while I was wondering what might happen with BUMBLEBEE SEASON. My nervous system was pretty amped up with all the excitement. I was thrilled to hear that the book had sold and then I had to go lie on the floor for a while.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
Moody, dramatic fiction.
What’s your favorite movie?
Oh, this is a tough one. I’ll say Hamnet, which I watched recently and loved. I adored the book, which is a different experience, and movie was visually so beautiful and moving.
What is your favorite season?
Fall is absolutely my favorite season. The Pacific Northwest is magical in autumn. I love the brisk air and the return of the rain. The rivers swell and the mosses turn vibrant shades of green. I love to be in the woods under the forest canopy dripping with rain. I enjoy the sound of the wind in the trees and the scent of wet earth.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I like to spend a little time alone on my birthday – a bookstore visit, a café. If the weather cooperates, I like to take a mountain bike ride or hike with my husband and the dog.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
THE SERVICEBERRY by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It’s a sweet, small book that shares the spirit of her longer work, BRAIDING SWEETGRASS. THE SERVICEBERRY is a lesson in gift economy and asks how we can find alternatives to an economic system that has weakened community connections and injured the planet.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
New Mexican. Hatch green chile, please.
What do you do when you have free time?
Anything that gets me outside: mountain biking, hiking, kiteboarding, swimming, birdwatching, and gardening. Indoors, I read a lot, and I play music with friends and my husband.
What can readers expect from you next?
I’m working on a new novel and a book of essays. They both seem to be coalescing around the power of dogs to change our lives for the better and make us more human. Stay tuned!
BUMBLEBEE SEASON by Eileen Garvin
Narrator: Alejandro Antonio Ruiz, Ellie Gossage, Evan Sibley
A Novel
From Eileen Garvin, nationally bestselling author of The Music of Bees and Crow Talk, a heartwarming new story that returns to the vibrant world of beekeeping in a small Oregon town
Beekeeper Jake Stevenson should be celebrating. After winning a prestigious culinary award, his fledgling honey farm has been inundated with orders. But as he approaches his largest harvest ever, Jake is worried. He can’t seem to hire any helpers, and there’s no way he can do it all by himself.
Meanwhile Flaco López, a Mexican teen sent north by his mother to escape growing danger in his village, has become separated from his companions and is lost on Mount Hood—hungry, scared, and alone—when he stumbles upon Jake’s beehives in a high alpine meadow.
And Abigail Plue, an entomology graduate student who prefers insects to people, is studying Mount Hood’s threatened Western bumblebee—and her research might be the only thing standing between the pristine wilderness and a controversial plan championed by a local rabble rouser, would-be Sheriff Dewitt, to build a commercial hunting camp there.
As Dewitt becomes increasingly strident in his calls to detain local immigrants, Flaco faces the growing danger of being an undocumented minor. And Jake and Abigail, confronting the potential destruction of the honeybees, bumblebees, and the wild meadow in which they thrive, must come together to protect everything they hold dear.
Women’s Fiction Friendship | Women’s Fiction Family Life [ Dutton, On Sale: April 21, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9798217044900 / eISBN: 9798217044917 ]
Buy BUMBLEBEE SEASON: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play | Books-A-Million | Indie BookShops | Ripped Bodice | Libro.fm | Audible | Walmart.com | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR
About Eileen Garvin
Born and raised in eastern Washington, Eileen Garvin lives in Oregon. Her novels, The Music of Bees and Crow Talk, are national bestsellers. The Music of Bees was named a Good Morning America Buzz Pick, a Good Housekeeping Book club Pick, a People Magazine Best New Book, an IndieNext Pick, a Library Reads Pick, a Christian Science Monitor Pick, a Washington Post Best Summer Reads, and named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by BookRiot, Bookish, Nerd Daily, The Tempest, Midwestness and others. Crow Talk was named a named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Zibby Mag, a top ten title on The Texas Library Association’s 2025 Lariat List features in common reads programs and book clubs around the country. Eileen’s memoir, How to be a Sister, was named an Indie Next by IndieBound and was chosen as a Target Book of the Month and a Kindle Book of the Month. How to be a Sister was recently released in audiobook. Her essays have appeared with Mom’s Don’t Have Time to Read Books, The Oregonian, PsychologyToday.com, and Creative Non-Fiction Magazine. Eileen shares her backyard with four chickens, wild birds of all kinds, and about 120,000 honeybees.
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