The release of “Queen Bee” is timely. Residents in East Millinocket and Medway last month rejected plans for a proposed — and much debated — national park, east of land owned by Roxanne Quimby, whose life this book explores. Phyllis Austin, a veteran regional author, is at her fair-minded best as she weaves a compelling and substantive biography of the legendary businesswoman and North Woods Park advocate.

How is this for a start in the world? “At age five, Roxanne was informed by her father that she needed to start earning and saving money and should not expect to rely on him for financial help after she finished high school,” Austin writes. “He promised to match the amount of money she had in her bank account when she started college. From then on she would sink or swim according to her own capabilities.”

John Quimby, a would-be inventor and entrepreneur, hustled his family from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Roxanne was born, to Ohio, New York, and Louisiana, never staying or really succeeding. Rather than focusing on the Dickensian negatives of her childhood, the founder of Burt’s Bees would later suggest that she “was energized and inspired by (her father’s) unrelenting efforts to make something happen.” (There was plenty of love also, especially from Roxanne’s mother and Russian grandmother, who ran a food stand at Revere Beach. Siblings, too, would always have a special place.)

After Quimby’s entry into the University of Massachusetts (with a $5,000 match grant from John), she is off to California in a VW with her soon-to-be-husband, George St. Clair, stopping in National Parks, attending art college and blending into the counter-culture. Then it was back across the continent, as the couple became back-to-the-landers, buying off the grid property in Guilford, Maine. Here she gave birth to twins, saw the breakup of her marriage and met the enigmatic Burt Shavitz, a previously successful New York photographer, lazing in Maine with his beehives. Burt, whose face became the emblem of a company and who died last week at age 80, noted, “No one ever accused me of being ambitious.” By contrast, nobody ever accused Quimby of catching an extra wink.

Austin provides the amazing step-by-step creation of a personal care empire built from the floor up through the drive, skill and organization of one person.

This is business history at its best, and like the founder of L.L. Bean himself, Quimby succeeded with intuition, small failures and success in marketing. Near the start of her beeswax experiments she wrote “Elizabeth Arden Watch Out” on a banner in her office, a reference to the famous cosmetics queen. The use of natural products and pursuit of beauty made the brand and its productive plant in Guilford, Maine, the stuff of folklore.

“Queen Bee” began with Quimby’s support, though she later stopped giving interviews. Austin writes, “Telling Roxanne’s story was the most difficult, frustrating reporting effort of my long writing career. Nonetheless, it was an exciting journey during the time she was interested in cooperating, and I felt and saw her charm and her ability to control events, as well as her vulnerability.”

Certainly Quimby has long been an outspoken, seemingly fearless public person who has drawn lightning from a multiplicity of sources who clashed with her ideas and visions. A whole Harvard study could be written about Governor John McKernan’s shocking inability to keep Burt’s Bees from leaving Maine for North Carolina when it needed to expand. Her later sale of the business and use of the proceeds to purchase thousands of acres of forest land near Baxter State Park is neatly articulated here. So is the reality of the sad fold-up of the once-dominant paper industry and the efforts of various groups – RESTORE, the Sportsman Alliance, the Nature Conservancy, and Plum Creek developers – to chart a new future for the Maine woods. It is a work in progress, and Roxanne Quimby has miles to go. If her work ethic, intelligence or past drive and persistence are any measure, she will be in it for the long run with positive results.

William David Barry is a local historian who has authored or co-authored seven books, including “Maine: The Wilder Side of New England” and “Deering: A Social and Architectural History.” He lives in Portland with his wife, Debra, and their cat, Nadine.


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