ABOUT THE BOOK

These, then, were Eva's half-memories. Of words but not their meanings, of a sweater but not the face above it. Of a box, the corner of a room, the scratch of wool, but never a whole father, or even a whole mother the way she'd been before. These were among the things she hoarded, like the nail files, key chains, and pink erasers she kept hidden in a shoebox, her loot. Because mostly, she didn't remember.

Critics across the country hailed Elizabeth Graver's first novel, Unravelling, as "exceptional" (The New York Times Book Review), a " pleasure" (The New Yorker), and "exquisitely poignant and sensual" (The Boston Globe). Now, Graver turns her talents to a contemporary novel about a woman and child who find that they cannot move ahead with the future until they can look clearly at the past. The summer that eleven-year-old Eva is picked up on her fourth shoplifting charge, her mother, Miriam, decide that the only solution is to move from Manhattan to a quiet town in upstate New York. There, she tells Eva, they can have a "normal" life.

But what Miriam doesn't tell her daughter, or anyone else, is that Eva's stealing scares her for a different reason, one related to a past she has been trying to ignore. As tensions mount between mother and daughter, it is, oddly enough, Eva's secret friendship with Burl - a reclusive beekeeper who lives down the road - that ultimately helps the two find their way back to each other. The Honey Thief is a haunting lyrical novel about the shadow the past casts on the present, the workings of memory and desire, and the healing powers of unexpected friendship.

Elizabeth Graver is the author of Have You Seen Me? And Unravelling. Her work has been included in Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays, and in two volumes of Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. She teaches at Boston College.