We’re pleased to announce the October selection for the Skylarking Book Club: it’s THE HIVE, by Melissa Scholes Young.

Some of you may remember Melissa when she appeared at the Unbound Book Festival a few years ago to discuss her novel, FLOOD. Like FLOOD, THE HIVE is set in Missouri - and it’s a Missouri that many will recognize and know well. It’s a wonderful novel, crackling with life and characters who will haunt you long after you’ve finished the final page. In other words, it’s a brilliant book club book and we can’t wait to talk about it with you!

The Fehler sisters wanted to be more than bug girls but growing up in a fourth- generation family pest control business in rural Missouri, their path was fixed. The family talked about Fehler Family Exterminating at every meal, even when their mom said to separate the business from the family, an impossible task. They tried to escape work with trips to their trailer camp on the Mississippi River, but the sisters did more fighting than fishing. If only there was a son to lead rural Missouri insect control and guide the way through a crumbling patriarchy.

After Robbie Fehler's sudden death, the surprising details of succession in his will are revealed. He's left the company to a distant cousin, assuming the women of the family aren't capable. As the mother's long-term affair surfaces and her apocalypse prepper training intensifies, she wants to trade responsibility for romance.

Facing an economic recession amidst the backdrop of growing Midwestern fear and resentment, the Fehler sisters unite in their struggle to save the company's finances and the family's future. To survive, they must overcome a political chasm that threatens a new civil war as the values that once united them now divide the very foundation they've built. Through alternating point-of-views, grief and regret gracefully give way to the enduring strength of the hive.

Here is what the Boone County Journal had to say: “Seldom does one encounter a book set in the Midwest that depicts its people as anything more than the hackneyed stereotypes that live in the imaginations of residents of the east and west coasts. In her new novel, The Hive, Melissa Scholes Young paints an honest and stunningly beautiful portrait of life in rural America that readers from all walks of life will appreciate. The Hive is a story about the Fehler family of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, ostensibly led by patriarch Robbie, owner of a fourth-generation, family-owned, pest control business, husband of doomsday-prepper Grace, and father of four daughters who must balance their desire for independence with their loyalty to their adoring, yet chauvinistic, dad. As any beekeeper knows, a hive is not a patriarchy, and neither is the Fehler family. While Grace is the Queen Bee of The Hive, daughter Maggie yearns to prove to her father that she is ready to take over the family business, favoring innovation over the status quo that has landed the family in dire financial straits.”

Alex got to read an early copy, and he raved: “The Hive by Melissa Scholes Young is real and raw and will pin you back in your seat. It’s a powerful portrait of a family coming to terms with a changing world that some are ready for, and others are not. The Fehler family is beautifully rendered in their messy complexity—flawed, tragic, and hopeful, all at once. I loved it.”

We’re pleased to report that Melissa has kindly agreed to Zoom into the meeting so you can ask her questions directly. While attendance is free, the only requirement is that you must have purchased your copy from Skylark, either in-person or online.

All in-store purchases will be automatically discounted by 15%. To claim your discount online, enter the code BC1021 on the check-out page.

Melissa Scholes Young is the author of the novels The Hive and Flood, and editor of Grace in Darkness and Furious Gravity, two anthologies of new writing by D.C. women writers. She is a contributing editor at Fiction Writers Review, and her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Ploughshares, Literary Hub and elsewhere. She has been the recipient of the Bread Loaf Bakeless Camargo Foundation Residency Fellowship and the Center for Mark Twain Studies’ Quarry Farm Fellowship. Born and raised in Hannibal, Missouri, she is currently an associate professor in Literature at American University.