A young woman speaks the language of bees – and fights for her future in the shadow of the Thirty Years’ War
It’s 1649, and Johanna is living a quiet, happy life on the Schwansen peninsula on the Baltic coast. She lives on her father’s farm, where she looks after the garden and keeps bees. The Thirty Years’ War seems far away.
When her father’s dies, however, Johanna’s idyll is shattered. Being a woman, she isn’t allowed to run her family’s farm. Her cousin Lorenz is the next in line to take over, and offers his help. But this turns out to be a ruse: he wants to keep the farm for himself, and throws Johanna and her gravely ill mother out.
But Johanna is a brave young woman, and won’t give up. A long journey and the biggest challenge of her life are before her. Just when all seems lost, she encounters the secretive honey hunters, who seem to understand bees almost as well as she does – and decides to enlist their help to get her farm back.