The Secret Life of Bees

In the summer of 1964, fourteen-year-old Lily Owens is haunted by the blurred, guilt-soaked memory of the day her mother died—and by life on a South Carolina peach farm with her cold, punishing father, T. Ray. Her one source of comfort is Rosaleen, the fierce Black woman who has helped raise her. When Rosaleen is jailed and beaten after trying to register to vote, Lily breaks her out, and the two set off together on the run.

Their only clue to Lily's mother's past is a picture of a Black Madonna with the words "Tiburon, S.C." scrawled on the back. Following it, Lily and Rosaleen arrive at the bright pink house of the Boatwright sisters—August, June, and May—beekeepers who take the pair in. As Lily learns the craft of tending bees and is drawn into the household's devotion to a Black Madonna, she begins to find the mothering she has ached for, and inches toward the truth about the woman she lost.

Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees is a beloved, best-selling coming-of-age novel about grief, race, and the search for maternal love in the segregated American South. Warm and lyrical, it braids civil-rights-era history with an intimate story of healing and belonging.