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The Secret Life of Bees | Introduction

The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, was published by Viking Press in 2002. It was the first novel by Kidd, who had already found success writing inspirational personal memoirs such as The Dance of the Dissident Daughter (1996). A bestseller, the novel has become a favorite of book clubs around the country, including the "Read This!" Book Club sponsored by the ABC network morning show, Good Morning America.

The Secret Life of Bees is the story of Lily, a fourteen-year-old girl who runs away from her unloving father to search for the secrets of her dead mother's past. The setting of the novel is South Carolina in 1964, a time when racial tensions were inflamed by the civil rights movement and white racists' frequently violent responses to it. Against this backdrop, Lily and her house-keeper, Rosaleen, find shelter in the home of the eccentric Boatwright sisters, three African American beekeepers who worship before the statue of a Black Madonna they call "Our Lady of Chains." In the Boatwright household, Lily finds love and acceptance and begins to come to terms with the guilt she feels over her mother's death.

In the novel, Kidd addresses the sometimes painful divide between races and generations through a rich tapestry of religious symbolism, imagining for the Daughters of Mary (as the Boatwrights and their small circle of fellow worshipers call themselves) a nurturing, personal alternative to the Catholic faith.

The Secret Life of Bees Summary

Chapter 1

Lily Owens remembers the summer of 1964, when she turned fourteen years old. She begins by describing the way she would wait in her bedroom each night for the arrival of bees. Though these bees are imagined, Lily's emotional attachment to them makes the reader wonder if they might be real. Lily's caretaker, Rosaleen, has told her that bees swarming are an omen of death. Lily is preoccupied with death, since her mother, Deborah, died when Lily was four. She thinks often of the day her mother died and shares the incident, as well as her own guilt, with the reader. She remembers sitting on the floor of the closet as her mother hurriedly packed a suitcase. She remembers her father, T. Ray, coming home and her parents arguing. Then T. Ray shoved Lily, and her mother grabbed a gun from the closet shelf. The gun ended up in T. Ray's hands, then on the floor, then in Lily's hands. Lily remembers the sound of the gun going off. Her mother was dead.

Unpopular in school and unloved by her father, Lily relies only on Rosaleen. She treasures a few objects connected to her mother: a photograph of Deborah, a pair of her white gloves, and a picture of a dark-skinned Virgin Mary mounted on wood, with "Tiburon, S.C." written on the back. She keeps these items buried in a tin box in her father's peach orchard, digging them up and imagining what sort of woman her mother was. Lily remembers that the day before she began first grade, T. Ray told her she had accidentally killed her mother.

On July 2, 1964, Rosaleen is overjoyed to learn President Lyndon Johnson has signed the Civil Rights Act into law. That night, needing to feel close to someone and something, Lily heads for the orchard to dig up her tin box. T. Ray catches her outside, assuming she is meeting a boy. He punishes her in a way Lily particularly hates: by making her kneel on the kitchen floor in a pile of Martha White grits, small grains that cut into her knees.

Lily accompanies Rosaleen to a Fourth of July voter-registration rally in Sylvan. Before she can register, however, Rosaleen attracts the attention of a group of men playing cards. They bait her with racial insults, and she responds by pouring tobacco juice on their shoes. A scuffle results, and Rosaleen is arrested for assault.

Chapters 2-3

The Civil Rights Act has obviously not reached Sylvan, as policeman Avery Gaston allows the locals who attacked Rosaleen to attack her again. Lily is released into T. Ray's custody, but Rosaleen must stay behind. T. Ray tells Lily that Rosaleen will likely be killed by Franklin Posey, a notoriously vicious racist, who is one of the men she offended. Furious at his daughter's actions, T. Ray tells Lily that her devotion to her dead mother is misplaced. Deborah had run away and left her family and, on the day she died, had planned to pack her belongings and leave permanently. Distraught and disbelieving, Lily decides to break Rosaleen out of police custody. As her world crumbles, she needs to be needed and appreciated.

When Lily returns to town, she is told that Rosaleen has been taken to the hospital. She sneaks into Rosaleen's hospital room, where Rosaleen admits she was beaten by Posey and other men. Lily and Rosaleen slip past the guard posted in front of her room. The two hitch a ride with driver of a cantaloupe truck who happens to be traveling to a location near Tiburon, the town noted on the back of the Black Madonna portrait. Since the picture belonged to her mother, Lily decides she will find answers there. Rosaleen and Lily quarrel when Rosaleen realizes Lily left Sylvan to pursue her own interests as much as to save her. They separate briefly but reunite and apologize to each other in a nearby creek.

After spending the night sleeping in the open air, Lily and Rosaleen continue their walk into Tiburon. They come to a general store, where Lily goes to buy food. Behind the counter, she notices jars of Black Madonna Honey, decorated with the familiar image of the dark-skinned Virgin Mary. The store's proprietor tells her the honey is made by a local woman, August Boatwright, whose bright pink house is impossible to miss.

Chapter 4

Lily and Rosaleen find August's house. A woman in the front yard is tending to boxes of bees. They are met at the door by August's sisters, June and May. Inside their house, Lily sees a carving of a woman that resembles a ship's masthead. Three feet tall, the woman is mostly black but has a faded red heart painted on her chest. Lily feels immediately drawn to the statue.

When August enters, Lily tells her that she and Rosaleen have run away from home and have no place to go. August immediately offers to let them stay. Lily continues to lie to August, pretending she is an orphan who, with her house-keeper Rosaleen as a chaperone, is headed to a relative's house in Virginia. August seems to accept their story and shows them around her honey-making operation. She offers them two cots in the "honey house" for them to use. The next morning, Lily rises early and surveys the Boatwright property. She discovers a rock wall with slips of paper stuck in its crevices.

Chapter 5

A week passes at the Boatwright household. August buys new clothes for Rosaleen, and May and June clean her wounds from her beating. Lily describes the role honey plays in the Boatwrights' life: they eat it, bathe in it, take it as medicine, and make candles from it. Lily enjoys learning how to tend to August's honey-making machinery, and Rosaleen develops a special rapport with May. They learn May is acutely sensitive to the suffering of... ยป Complete The Secret Life of Bees Summary