Story is a map

It’s 2:00 AM November 9, 2024 and I wake with moon slanting through window blinds. I’ve been dreaming in a montage of campaign videos of Kamala interacting with the American people—hugging, listening, standing at the lectern. Surely, I am looking at the next President of the United States. It takes several seconds for my mind to catch up to post-election reality. A wave of grief washes through me. I ease out of bed to the far corner of the house where I curl into weeping that doesn’t wake my beloved.

At 6:30 AM I rise again and write in my journal, listen to my prayer chimes. I scroll through the NY Times and read historian Heather Cox Richardson and attorney Robert Hubbell. They do not lighten my mood. Ann puts arms around me, “Not to pressure you, but at 9:00 AM, a bunch of people will be looking to you for guidance and wisdom.”

By 8:45, I am dressed, hair fluffed, composed and ready to Zoom with nearly 40 people who have read my novel, The Beekeeper’s Question, so we can talk about the full arc of the story without spoiling the plot. People check into the chat from across the US and Canada. Ann is the guardian of space—on Zoom and in the heart of conversation.

American troops march through Belfast 1942.

We talk about the book because hindsight offers perspective, and we need that now. Story is a map, and the map that gets one person through helps to get the next person through. Stories of WWII have given us maps of valor, courage, protecting the persecuted. We know how to rise to our best selves in our situation because we have learned from stories of how they rose in their situations. Hundreds of movies, documentaries, memoirs, novels have informed us about fascism and authoritarianism and war in ways people in the 1930s and 1940s were not informed. This education allows us to think differently about what is happening now, and to react more effectively. Resistance is rallying, even in our shock.

Even in an era as horrific as the 1940s, stories model human choices in the arc of history. We learn as we read. We contemplate these “victories of the human spirit.” And now, and for the years coming, you and I are challenged to pluck courage from these pages and apply them in our own lives. We shall need to embrace discomfort, take risks, be bold, brave, extending, careful, compassionate, fierce… take your pick.

I wrote The Beekeeper’s Question during Trump’s first administration and the pandemic. The folks of Pigeon River gave me a place to stand and practice being an elder in unsettled times. Readers can see the influence of current reality in the dialogues of the fictional Doc and Leo and Gramma Josie.  War is upon them, near and far. The consequences of history swirl like a dust bowl.  Young men are in peril, young women in fear and determination. The community struggles to stay strong. I imagined their strength into being. Now I imagine my own strength into action. That’s why we read books like this: they inspire real action in the real world.

At the end of the call someone asked, “Can we all go to Pigeon River?” No. It’s a fictional town. But we can take the best from that place, those characters, and become Pigeon River. We can tend our sense of community, find our inner wisdom, take care of each other. The only place our current rifts can heal is in our own towns, neighborhoods, communities and families. Big work in small places. That’s what Pigeon River models: people doing their best, muddling through, being bold, being forgiving, acknowledging that life is hard and sorrowful and beautiful.

10:00 AM So this is how it goes for now: we fall apart, we rise. We parse what we read and watch. We put arms around each other. We gather and say what is real. We listen and find paths forward. We take care of each other. We read.

Next Zoom call for people who have completed reading (so we can talk about the plot and relevance to America today without ruining anyone’s read) is JANUARY 11, 2025 @ 9:00 AM Pacific/12:00 noon Eastern.

And to say—my intention with this blog is to keep writing into the ear of now… it will not become only focused on the book, though these weeks of “newly published” are a significant moment and I appreciate your support and/or tolerance.

What the book needs now: if you are willing.

Thank you for every purchase. Thank you for every review. You can insert the same review in Amazon (both formats), Bookshop, Good Reads.

The book is listed in Ingram, so local bookstores can order it. Please ask them to stock a few copies as you will be referring friends to the title.

The book has a Kirkus Review, so libraries will now order it.  Put in a request.

Please consider giving the book for holidays this year. I will personally inscribe decorative bookplates you can paste in any gift books you want author/graphed. Email your list to christina@christinabaldwin.com. I promise 24-hour turnaround.

Please nominate The Beekeeper’s Question for your book club. I am already booking Zoom sessions with clubs and am available throughout the year—in person when I can.

On-line: Reader’s Circle will be listing the book for 3 months on the home-page. Recommend it please.

Online: talk it up on whatever social media you engage in. You can pull the visuals from https://christinabaldwin.com/books/beekeepers-question/.

I am on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christinabaldwinbeekeepersquestion/

I will soon be starting an Instagram campaign. Watch for it.

I am negotiating an audio version available early next year.

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It is 9:00 PM two weeks later.

Democracy is not over, it is rebooting. We are rebooting.

We will find the road forward. We will walk it together.

We will keep honey in our hearts.