Gail Anderson-Dargatz is out of breath when she picks up the phone in her Alberta farmhouse. “You caught me on the pot!” she blurts. The plan is to discuss her second novel, A Recipe for Bees (released in September), but besides being disarmingly candid, Anderson-Dargatz is also easily sidetracked. In moments she’s laughing about the label “Pacific Northwest Gothic” slapped on her debut novel, The Cure for Death by Lightning, by a Boston Sunday Globe writer. “Isn’t that a piece of work?” she says. “What does that mean?”


Highfalutin labels don’t mean much to Anderson-Dargatz. Not that she doesn’t appreciate critical praise. It’s just that she’s probably more thrilled when an article about her makes her mother-in-law’s fridge. It’s the down-to-earth farmer in her, you see. It’s also the farmer in her that compels her to turn the nitty-gritty details of life into fiction, that dictates both her practical and playful approach to writing, and that has even helped her avoid the awful case of second-time-out jitters anyone in her position could be forgiven for having. While the literary world waits eagerly to decide whether Bees lives up to the success of Cure (a Giller nominee and the recipient of a slew of other accolades), Anderson-Dargatz is calmly working away on her third novel and a book of essays – both further examinations of farming themes – as happily oblivious to the buzz as any writer could be. “I know I’m supposed to be nervous,” she says. “But I think you have to be stuck in the literary culture for that to happen. I’m way out in the middle of nowhere. That helps.”

A Recipe for Bees is a tale of a farm marriage – “not a farm marriage I think anyone would envy,” she says – told through the eyes of an elderly beekeeper. It’s a book about the tenacity of such marriages, and for it she has harvested the lives of those around her in much the same way she did to create her first book. Beekeeping research started at home; her husband Floyd Anderson-Dargatz (both took the hyphenated last name when they married) is a beekeeper. And the marriage in Bees takes its cue from the partnerships of those she knows best: her parents, her husband’s parents, her friends, her own. Farm marriages are not romanticized; rather, Anderson-Dargatz lays out the tricks and traps that make them last, for better or for worse. The land is as much a bond as the marriage itself; it’s a business partnership as well as a personal one – “sticking with it” is entrenched in rural culture.

Despite its farm setting, Recipe for Bees differs sharply from the darkly fantastical Cure for Death by Lightning. Bees is less sinister, more straightforward, and does not incorporate recipes and potions into the story in the way that Cure did. There is, however, one significant exception: the book’s title comes from an actual recipe for bees, written by the Roman poet Virgil, which Anderson-Dargatz has slipped into the story.

Not only is Bees different than Cure, but it evolved differently as well. The more dramatic elements of Cure, such as incest, are things Anderson-Dargatz researched rather than experienced herself; Bees cuts a little closer to the bone. An infidelity in the fictional marriage produces a child, just as an infidelity in Anderson-Dargatz’s parents’ marriage produced a child: her. Even closer to reality is a character who’s undergoing brain surgery for a cavernous angioma, a non-malignant growth that has impaired his ability to speak, read, and control his emotions – the precise ailment her own husband has struggled through for the past several years. Anderson-Dargatz says the book is more autobiographical than any she has written or intends to. “It wrote itself and it wouldn’t let go. I don’t like to do that. I much prefer writing about other people’s lives.

“I remember the horrific month when Floyd was in hospital. I felt everything keenly, and yet some part of me was staring down, thinking, ‘this is good material’. I don’t think that’s very healthy.” But then the writer’s – and farmer’s – practicality takes over. “On the other hand,” Anderson-Dargatz adds, “it may be a necessary skill for the job.”

Through the writing of Bees, Floyd played a significant role in the development of the novel. As the resident bee expert, he offered to help Anderson-Dargatz with the research. The result was a new give-and-take in their marriage: Anderson-Dargatz assists with the farming, while Floyd has become, in effect, her literary partner. Not only does she consider her husband a more effective interviewer than herself – “Floyd is a better listener than I am. I’m too quick to give an opinion” – she says he’s more suited for digging up some of the subject matter. “Old farmers love to talk about farming, but particularly to a male.”

Anderson-Dargatz describes her second-floor office as too small and full of dead bugs. Aside from the usual writer’s paraphernalia – a well-used computer, stacks of papers and books, various spidery diagrams and recipe cards, which she uses to help her plot scenes and rearrange structure – she has amassed a collection of dead bees, dead dragonflies, and dried flowers. And, she sounds delighted to report, hanging over the whole, messy, cramped lot is a partially unravelled wasp’s nest. The neighbours know to salvage abandoned wasps’ nests; made from the pulp of paper chewed up by the wasps, they make an ideal supply for the homemade bookmarks – garnished with dried flowers, dead bees, and dead dragonflies – that Anderson-Dargatz hands out at bookstores and readings. What began as a spontaneous craft project has quickly become a trademark, one that endears her readers (known to beg for, and even pinch, extras to give with the books as gifts). She’s taking her craftiness further with Bees by producing piles of miniature photo albums that replicate the photos in the book (haunting black-and-whites from her parents’ family album), as well as recipe cards featuring the eponymous recipe for bees.

These small oddities, each one what Anderson-Dargatz calls “a spontaneous work of art,” seem the perfect little promotional tools, a fact not lost on her publisher, Knopf Canada, which includes bookmarks in her media kits. Stacks are also sent to her foreign publishers. But Anderson-Dargatz vehemently denies any marketing motive behind the crafts. “It’s something I enjoy doing and want to do. If I was doing it to sell books it would lose its karma. It would smell bad.” Indeed, like the farming themes and folklore in her books, the bookmarks harken back to her upbringing. “I grew up making homemade paper. I made my own doll furniture. I’ve always done that kind of stuff. It’s stuck with me.”

Besides that, it works as a handy diversion, a key part of Anderson-Dargatz’s writing strategy. Sitting too long at the keyboard is bad for body and mind, she says. Thus, her days are a mixture of writing, research, reading, and interviews. She lets ideas germinate while walking or cycling. And she’s typically at work on several projects at a time, setting one aside when she hits a snag. A Recipe for Bees, for example, was already in the works when she was writing Cure. Currently, she’s fishing around for ideas for her next project, while researching her third novel and writing her first book of non-fiction. The novel she’s working on, about the still-vital role of religion in farming communities, is set in Alberta, Texas, and Kenya. It has already been purchased in Britain, and is set for release in three years. Meanwhile, she’s writing a book of personal essays, in the tradition of Sharon Butala, to be released in 2000. Using as a framework her move from the lush B.C. interior to windswept Alberta farmland, she’s deliciously caught up in portraying what she calls her unsentimental view of farm life. “For me it is not the quieter, simpler life. It’s complicated, messy, filled with political intrigue, and yes, sex.”