description: Fourteen-year-old Lily Owens lost her beloved mother when she was only four—under tragic circumstances clouded by time and secrecy. She later found a fiercely protective "stand-in," her abusive father's outspoken housekeeper, Rosaleen. Ignoring differences in age and color—and the fact that racial hatred seethed during the summer of 1964 in rural South Carolina—these two unlikely companions set off on a seemingly aimless pilgrimage that ends at the home of a trio of eccentric bee-keeping black sisters.Lily tells her remarkable tale of longing and love in an idiom and accent heard far south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but the lessons learned during her odyssey into the world of bees and their "secret life" are universal and everlasting.In her debut novel, Sue Monk Kidd proves herself adept both at storytelling and at creating characters who are simultaneously outlandish and credible—in other words, worthy to join the ranks of such first-rate Southern stylists as Kaye Gibbons, Anne Rivers Siddons, and Ellen Gilchrist.
language: English
title: The Secret Life of Bees
titlecomplete: The Secret Life of Bees
characters: Lily Owens, T. Ray Owens, Rosaleen, May Boatwright, June Boatwright, August Boatwright
genres: Historical, Adult, Novels, Young Adult, Classics, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Contemporary, Adult Fiction, Coming Of Age
ratings_count: 1266749
places: South Carolina, The United States of America, Tiburon, South Carolina
awards: awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Longlist, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Book Sense Book of the Year Award
category: Paperback, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Lincoln Award, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Gateway Readers Award, awardedAt: 1230796800000
name: LovelyBooks Leserpreis
category: Allgemeine Literatur
publisher: Highbridge