Hour of the Bees

The greatest act of violence here involves tearing Grandpa Serge from his lifelong home "for his own good" and treating him like less than a full person (he's elderly and in failing health, and he has dementia, but he knows and loves a lot more than he's given credit for). Once in the assisted living facility, he's drugged into a drooling stupor to keep him quiet. Rattlesnakes sometimes bite characters. Characters find the mangled corpse of a sheep killed by a predator. In one of the intertwined stories, chopping down a tree has dire consequences.

Carol's older sister is the child of their mother's first marriage. She sometimes sneaks off to meet her boyfriend.

Occasional "poo," "pissed," "crap," "sucks."

The assisted living center where Grandpa Serge is held against his will drugs him to keep him in a stupor.

Parents need to know that Lindsay Eagar's luminous debut, Hour of the Bees, intertwines the story of a magical tree and the people it sustained with the tale of a life-changing summer for 12-year-old Carol, who has issues of her own ("I don't want to be Mexican. Or American. Or Mexican-American. Or Caro-leeen-a. Just being Carol is hard enough"). There are plenty of heavy subjects, from the drought that's laid waste to the land to the deep rifts within families. A character is forcibly removed from his home "for his own good," and much of Carol's internal conflict comes from her growing sense of wrongness about this. People and animals, some beloved, die, and readers may want to keep a box of tissues handy for some scenes. There's a bit of mild language ("poo," "pissed," "crap," "sucks"), and in a desperate-times-call-for-desperate-measures scene, a tween character steals a car. But overall, the captivating narrative voice and the strong messages of love, family, courage, and not spitting on your roots carry the day.