Bitter Honey by Caryl Lewis

Pre-order title – available 19 June

‘A seed in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible’ Old Welsh Proverb

One orchard, three women, eleven letters. Hannah has lived at Berllan Deg all her life, her husband came to live at the orchard when they got married. Tonight, she prepares for his funeral as he lies in the parlour.

Over fifty years of marriage, a lifetime of memories dissipating in the impossibility of his stillness. He was a writer and a beekeeper who came to understand the world through the language of bees. He has left her eleven letters; the exact same number as there are frames in a bee’s nest.

Each letter is an examination of an aspect of their marriage. The morning of the funeral, Sadie, Hannah’s estranged little sister comes back home for the service. As the letters unfold, they reveal a devastating secret that will make Hannah have to re-evaluate her whole life.

Bitter Honey is a novel which brings three very different women together into a broken Eden and examines how they rebuild it on their own terms.