Alice Holtzman
Alice Holtzman remains true to her German-American engineering in her philosophy of life that if you plan ahead then you will always be prepared for when things eventually happen. Anticipation of anything that might go wrong may not make for the most exciting life in the world, but at least when bad things happen like the premature death of a husband or running into a kid in a wheelchair with 120,000 Russian honeybees in the back of the truck at the time, she was more prepared than most.
Alice is a widow at forty-four trying her best not only to run a bee farm in Oregon but find some meaning in it to make the rest of her existence worthwhile. The kid in the wheelchair and an ex-con who has issues of his own with attempting to control fate before it hits again will prove essential and invaluable comrades in Alice’s make the honeybee trade more than machinery for making sure the power bill gets paid.
Jake Stevenson
Jacob Stevenson is introduced in the very first line of the novel as the student with the tallest mohawk in the history of his high school. Shortly thereafter the narrative moves to describing the moment when horseplay on a second-story roof resulted in damage to his spinal cord serious enough to make him the paraplegic who happened to be in that wheelchair when Alice Holtzman plowed her truck with all the bees in the back right the spot he had formerly occupied on the shoulder of the road.
In addition to the obvious difficulties facing Jake, his relationship with his parents—especially his father—isn’t great and as a result of his accident—the one which took place on the roof—his dreams of pursuing a exploiting his one true talent is dashed. Of course, Jake would probably say that his dreams had been midway through his senior year in school when he learned he’s lost his scholarship to the music school he was depending upon to change everything. Fortunately, that second accident—the one with the bees and truck—turns out to change quite a bit for Jakes and almost entirely for the better.
Harry Stokes
Harry Stokes’ most significant character attribute is that he is a compulsive creator of lists. It all began in a booster seat in a Lincoln Town Car with an orange crayon as his mother made her desperate escape from Harry’s father. His first division of pros and cons was comprised of drawings of a horse, a cop, and a tiger. Only a stick figure representing Daddy was on the “con” side. Ironically enough, that little boy would grow up to become an ex-con by the time his path crossed with those of Alice and Jake.
In addition to an obsessive urge to try to exert some sort of control over fate through a process of division and assignation, Harry’s life has also been shaped by a psychological affliction urging him to please everyone. This desire to be liked inevitably backfired and once did so to the extreme that Harry was sentenced to two years in prison for doing nothing more than agreeing to help some friends by driving a truck filled with stolen televisions. After serving nine months, Harry walks out of prison and into the posting Alice had left on a job listing board. The “con” side of his list the posting stimulated was once again unfairly overbalanced toward the “pros” with just one single entry once again comparing the “con” side: “bees.”
