Bumblebee Season

Garvin (Crow Talk) delivers a heart-wrenching yet uplifting story of an Oregon beekeeper who joins forces with a PhD student to save the local ecosystem and protect the area’s undocumented migrants and refugees. Jake Stevenson, paralyzed below his waist, tends to his honeybees on Mount Hood, where he provides shelter to Mexican teen Flaco Lopez, sent north by his mother to escape the violent cartels ravaging their hometown. Meanwhile, neurodiverse graduate student Abigail Plue has spent her entire life feeling inadequate, until a professor appoints her to research bumblebees in a lab. She’s then assigned to organize a field study in the Oregon woods to research endangered species. There, she meets Jake and Flaco, along with Christian firebrand E.W. Dewitt, who’s running for Hood River County sheriff as “the godly choice” and vowing to round up “illegals.” Dewitt also plans to build a hunting camp that would destroy the bees’ habitat. Abigail, Flaco, and Jake each rise to the occasion in satisfying ways, and Garvin gleefully spotlights the characters’ resilience (“We neurodiverse folk can teach you neurotypicals a thing or two,” Abigail’s professor declares). Readers will cheer on the heroes of this winning story. (Apr.)

Correction: A previous version of this review misattributed the quote about neurodiverse folk.