Honey in Her Veins Quotes

“Everything in this family circled back to honey and tea, tea and honey. Jack told me once that healing started with a simmering pot and a spoonful of gold. In this house, tea was a love language all its own, and it spoke when words and other medicines failed.”
― Ruth McKell, Honey in Her Veins: A Novel

“”Do you think she’ll like your new tattoos?
Instinctively, I touched the inside of my forearm where one of the sleeves of ink began. What had started as an act of defiance had metamorphosed into armor with every new design. Little black songbirds flew up my skin, the arc of a wing shading the scar beneath. Woodland details filled in the gaps between the varied species of birds and a curl of honeycomb rounding my left biceps.
The latter had been an impulse, really. A nostalgic dig of the knife that suddenly felt far too exposing.”
― Ruth McKell, Honey in Her Veins: A Novel

“Nothing, however, sold like raw honeycomb. This late in the summer, bottles of the sticky, sugared medicine practically flew off their shelves.
Eva understood. Twenty-five years of keeping the bees with her father and older sister, and still she thrilled each time she sank her teeth into those warm, dripping cells. There was a strangely primal allure to that hint of spice among the sweet, pollen and enzymes sliding down her tongue.
It was hard, when paired with one of the teas in their Honey Shoppe, not to call that magic. Tourists came from miles around for a taste of the honeyman’s bottled summertime and a sachet of herbs they fully believed would rid them of their ailments. Dad shrugged off their wilder beliefs, always saying that nature was magic enough.
He didn’t disclose his somewhat enchanted green thumb, or his habit of collecting rare and mysterious flowers far up the mountain. Nor did he mention his magical daughter, whose greenhouse was brimming with herbs and florals Eva had cultivated to heal and cure.”
― Ruth McKell, Honey in Her Veins: A Novel