Excerpt from The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

In July, the earth was parched, but in our garden we had apricot and almond trees and tulips and irises and fritillaries. When the river dried up, I would go down to the irrigation pond to collect water for the garden to keep it alive. By August, it was like trying to resuscitate a corpse, so I watched it all die and melt into the rest of the land. When it was cooler we would take a walk and watch the falcons flying across the sky to the desert.

I had four beehives in the garden, piled one on top of the other, but the rest were in a field on the outskirts of eastern Aleppo. I hated to be away from the bees. In the mornings, I would wake up early, before the sun, before the muezzin called out for prayer. I would drive the thirty miles to the apiaries and arrive as the sun was just rising, fields full of light, the humming of the bees a single pure note.

Excerpted from The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri. Copyright © 2019 by Christy Lefteri. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.