Sue Monk Kidd

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

Merry Rudinger

Laura Wilson

“You know, some things don’t matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the over all scheme of life? But lifting a persons heart - now, that matters.”

“I don’t know if that’s what he wanted to ask me, but it’s something everybody wants - for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters. “

“It is the particular nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening.”

The Secret Life of Bees quotes

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