Other than her bonsai trees, twenty-year-old arborist Silvania August Moonbeam Merigal is alone in the world. After first her mother dies and then her grandfather—the man who raised her and the last of her family—Silva suffers a sexual assault and becomes pregnant, and then, ready to end her own life, discovers evidence of a long-lost artist grandmother, Isabelle.
Desperate to remake a family for herself, Silva leaves her island home on the Puget Sound and traces her grandmother’s path first to a beekeeper named Nick Larkins with secrets of his own, and then to a religious, anti-government, Y2K cult embedded deep in the wilds of Hells Canyon. Len Dietz is charismatic leader of the Almost Paradise compound, a place full of violence and drama: impregnated child brides called the “Twelve Maidens,” an armed occupation of a visitor’s center, shot-up mountain sheep washing up along with a half-drowned dog, and men transporting weapons in the middle of the night.
As tensions erupt into violence, Silva, Isabelle, Nick, and the members of Almost Paradise find themselves disastrously entangled, and Silva is forced to face both her own history of loss, and the history of loss she’s stepped into: ruinous stories of family that threaten to destroy them all.
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Advance Praise
**Winner of the 2020 American Fiction Award for Thriller: Crime**
**Popsugar Book Club Best New Thrillers Selection**
**Dreamscape Media trending audiobook**
**LitHub’s CrimeReads Best New Debut Selection**
“An affecting, lyrical debut. The novel blossoms when it explores how the rhythms of nature add grace to human solitude. A profound, stark tale of loss and longing across generations. Lampman is a writer to watch.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Gorgeous and thought-provoking descriptions of bee and tree life, as well as the Pacific Northwest generally. Suggest some nature-focused nonfiction, such as Peter Wohlleben’s to go with Lampman’s powerful debut novel.”
—Booklist
“A thought-provoking read. A tale of loss that will cut deep into you. Unique and full of tension and action. Plenty of twists to keep you hooked and a great mystery that you seriously will not want to put down. When you’re done reading it, you’ll want more. This is a story that you can really lose yourself in.”
–Readers Favorite
“SINS OF THE BEES is a fascinating glimpse into the world of a paranoid doomsday cult, with echoes of The Handmaid’s Tale—though this isn’t science fiction. This heartfelt contemporary literary thriller brings together multiple timelines into a compelling whole, with elements of romance, suspense, and mystery intertwining. Annie Lampman is clearly a writer to watch.”
—Dan Chaon, National Book Award finalist and author of Ill Will
“Lush and sweeping in its language and its landscape, SINS OF THE BEES takes us to the heart of human need—for love, for family, for a reason to stay alive. Moving between the verdant Pacific Coast and the arid breaks of Hells Canyon, from the artist’s reflective sensibility to the survivalist’s absolute desire to own and control the people around him, Lampman weaves a story of destiny and desperation that pitches one woman’s quest for paradise against the violent will of a man bent on domination and destruction.”
—Kim Barnes, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of In the Kingdom of Men
“Compelling and deeply affecting, SINS OF THE BEES is a literary thriller about two women’s search for identity and their struggle to feel grounded and loved; to belong. I felt submerged in the lyrical writing, swept away by the undertows of desire, desperation, loss, and redemption. Annie Lampman’s debut is a stunner.”
— Lesley Kagen New York Times bestselling author of Every Now and Then
“With stunning, poetic language, Lampman weaves a remarkable novel full of wisdom and hope. It’s a contemporary cautionary tale that speaks to the dangers and devastation wrought by powerful, charismatic men—and to the women who resurrect themselves by rejecting and repudiating them. And at the story’s core is a deep search for family connection. A marvelous, metaphorical and profound debut.”
—Buddy Levy, Bestselling Author of Labyrinth of Ice
“SINS OF THE BEES is a complex and beautifully written family saga about loss, tragedy, and redemption set against the unsettling confines of a cult in rural Idaho. Silva and Isabelle are unforgettable protagonists questing for meaning, belonging, and family. Annie Lampman’s gorgeous, astonishing debut kept me up way too late at night!”
—Mary Pauline Lowry, author of The Roxy Letters
“With exquisite prose, Lampman’s SINS OF THE BEES weaves the brutality and beauty of nature, the depths of loss and the grief of love, and the twisted beliefs of a religious cult into an edge of your seat literary thriller.”
— Kim Taylor Blakemore, author of The Companion and After Alice Fell
“SINS OF THE BEES is a breathtaking, multi-layered meditation on love and loss, family and faith. With an urgency befitting our times, Lampman exposes the devastating price we pay when we empower cunning, amoral leaders. An ambitious debut that pits the family we’re born into against the one we choose for ourselves.”
—Marco Rafalà, author of How Fires End
“Grief in the green bounty, passion in the deep desert, the regrets of our ancestors coursing in our veins—SINS OF THE BEES is about the ways we in the American West try and fail, and yet might keep trying, to be in more sustaining relationship with ourselves, one another, and all the land that holds us. The writing here is breathtaking, as is the vision. This is a striking debut.”
— Joe Wilkins, author of Fall Back Down When I Die
“Lampman’s people are Westerners in the most literal sense, defined for better or worse by their attachments to the Hells Canyon wilderness—via history, livelihood, ideology—and by the pull of an isolated millennialist cult called Almost Paradise. SINS OF THE BEES echoes the work of writers like Annie Proulx and Rick Bass in its portrayal of memory-haunted folks inextricably bound to the harsh and beautiful land.”
—Daniel Orozco, Whiting Award recipient and author of Orientation and Other Stories
“Annie Lampman—teacher of creative writing and published poet—is adding another notch to her belt with the novel SINS OF THE BEES, a then-and-now story of two women and the struggles they meet up with in preserving their families in the face of tumultuous events. More than a human melodrama, Lampman uses everything she knows from backpacking into the land around Idaho’s Snake River and Hells Canyon to add realism to her tale of love and loss. In fact, this is both a naturalist’s guide to the sunbaked sections of the Pacific northwest—the plants and animals that live there (including bees and bonsai trees)—and a literary thriller of a romance that keeps the reader hanging on to the Epilogue. Brava, Ms. Lampman!”
— Mitch Silver, author of the recent thriller, The Apollo Deception