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.
The Secret Life of Bees 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 "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest 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 beekeeping sisters who live in a peptobismal pink house introduce Lily to a mesmerizing world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna who presides over their household.
This book was a little to touchy feely for me, all the hugging, praying,finding yourself crap was ya-ya sisterhood on a smaller scale. I found it extremely predictable i.e. Lily's mother living with the "calender girls" May, June and August ten years prior.
I really had to plow my way through the ending of this book {I just couldn't take all the happiness} and felt like taking peptalbismal for upset stomach after reading.
Reading updates
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Started reading
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18 November, 2008:
Finished reading
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18 November, 2008:
Reviewed