Abiquiú, New Mexico, frames the book’s final 2004 scene, where a beekeeper wakes in a cell before dawn. The location’s quiet, spare setting gives the ending its last image: a moonlit path leading toward a chapel, seen from confinement.

Setting and Scene

The closing passage identifies Abiquiú, New Mexico, and the year 2004 before a bell rings an hour before dawn. The beekeeper, roused from a nightmare, gets up in a small cell furnished with a bed, a chair, and a desk. A single small window in the thick adobe wall looks onto a gravel path silvered by moonlight and leading toward a chapel.

Narrative Significance

The scene makes Abiquiú the setting for the book’s final return to the beekeeper. Its details hold confinement and a visible route toward the chapel in the same frame: the cell is bounded, but the path remains in view. The passage ends not with an account of what lies beyond the cell, but with this spare juxtaposition of enclosure, moonlight, and direction.