The Secret Life of Bees

by SueMonkKidd (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $3.28

  Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four. She not only has her own memory of holding the gun, but her father's account of the event. Now fourteen, she yearns for her mother, and for forgiveness. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her father, she has only one friend: Rosaleen, a black servant whose sharp exterior hides a tender heart. South Carolina in the sixties is a place where segregation is still considered a cause worth fighting for. When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily is compelled to act. Fugitives from justice and from Lily's harsh and unyielding father, they follow a trail left by the woman who died ten years before. Finding sanctuary in the home of three beekeeping sisters, Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world, as about the mystery surrounding her mother.

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $3.28

• New

  Paperback
  2003

  $16.88

  The multimillion-copy bestselling first novel by the author of The Invention of Wings, coming from Viking in January 2014 The Secret Life of Bees was a New York Times bestseller for more than two and a half years, a Good Morning America Read This Book Club pick and was made into an award-winning film starring Dakota Fanning, Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, and Alicia Keys. A coming of age tale set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees will appeal to fans ofKathryn Stockett s The Help and Beth Hoffman s Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, and tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily s fierce-hearted black stand-in mother, Rosaleen, insults three of the town s most vicious racists, Lily decides they should both escape to Tiburon, South Carolina a town that holds the secret to her mother s past. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters who introduce Lily to a mesmerizing world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna who presides over their household. This is a remarkable story about divine female power and the transforming power of love a story that women will continue to share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.