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Virtual Event – Melissa Scholes Young
June 15, 2021 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Magic City Books is proud to welcome Melissa Scholes Young for a virtual event in celebration of her new novel, The Hive on Tuesday June 15 at 7:00 CT.
The Hive is a story of survival, sisters, and secrets. The Fehler family’s four daughters and their newly widowed, doomsday prepper mother struggle to keep their pest control business from bankruptcy during a recession. Set in a racially and politically divided rural Midwestern town during the Obama years, The Hive shows feminism rising from rural roots.
Melissa will be in conversation with Magic City Books Buyer and Author Program Coordinator, Pat Cawiezell.
This free event will be hosted on the Zoom platform and Facebook Live. To register in advance for the event on Zoom visit: https://magiccitybooks.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_mRS8vRZGSD-JDF3qC7A9nw.
After registering you will receive a confirmation email with details on how to join the event on Tuesday June 15 at 7:00 pm CT.
The Hive will be published by Keylight Books on June 8, 2021. To pre-order a copy visit Magic City Books in person or online here: https://magiccitybooks.square.site/product/the-hive/517.
About The Hive
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.
Melissa Scholes Young was born and raised in Hannibal, Missouri. She is the author of the novels Flood and The Hive. She’s a Contributing Editor for Fiction Writers Review and Editor of two volumes of D.C. Women Writers: Grace in Darkness (2018) and Furious Gravity (2020). Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Washington Post, Ploughshares, Narrative, Poet Lore, and Poets & Writers Magazine. Scholes Young was named a Bread Loaf Camargo Fellow and a Quarry Farm Fellow at the Center for Mark Twain Studies. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at American University in Washington, D.C.
