The Secret Life of Bees concerns Lily, a teen South Carolina girl growing up in the 1960s, her life marred by a neglectful father, and a false impression of her deceased mother. In the turbulent summer of 1964, Lily can take no more of her father's lies, the neglect, the guilt. She gathers up a fistful of her mother's belongings, marked Tiburon, South Carolina, and with her nursemaid, Rosaleen--who herself is suffering imprisonment, and injustice in the wake of becoming the victim of a racially motivated attack--heads off to Tiburon, in search of answers. What Lily finds there are three unique sister beekeepers--May, June, and August Boatwright--all three as sweet as the honey on which they make their living, and as mysterious and welcoming as the Black Mary they adore.

Through the sisters and their motherly group of assorted Mary devotees, Lily and Rosaleen find a new definition of family, and the courage to defy and reject the turbulent times and people around them, and in the wake of that rejection, to find peace, healing, and the truths of which Lily has been in need.

The Secret Life of Bees is Sue Monk Kidd's first novel, a lovely tale, a well-drawn portrait of a lonely young woman, somewhere on the cusp between the mysterious and mythical, with all the sultriness of a Southern afternoon. It put me in mind of the earlier Southern writers, such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and--yes--the writer to whom Sue Monk Kidd has often drawn comparisons: Carson McCullers, yet with a tiny flavor of someone such as, say, Charles DeLint, too. Yet The Secret Life of Bees is more than that; more than just a new twist in the glossary of Southern Myth: it is a snapshot of the various forms of family and devotion, and a lovely, intriguing treatise on the divinity of family, the divine woman, and the goddess within every woman. We thoroughly enjoyed this novel, devoured it as we have few others, and have looked forward to more lovely work from Ms. Kidd. Do give The Secret Life of Bees a try. We are confident you will not be disappointed.

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