The Secret Life of Bees: The stunning multi-million bestselling novel by Sue Monk Kidd

The multi-million-copy bestselling novel from the author of The Invention of Wings. The Secret Life of Bees was a New York Times bestseller for over two years, was made into an award-winning film and was long-listed for the Orange Prize.

Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four years old. Now, at fourteen, she yearns for forgiveness and a mother's love. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her harsh and unforgiving father, she has only one friend, Rosaleen, a black servant.

When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily chooses to flee with her. Fugitives from justice, the pair 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.

Review

Moving, original, and accomplished ... wonderfully written, powerful, poignant, and humorous, and takes a line which is - refreshingly - strongly female without being cliche-feminist. It is also deliciously eccentric, which lifts it out of the usual category of a rite-of-passage novel into the realms of real distinction. Do read it ― Joanna Trollope

Charming, funny, moving and unmistakeably from the American South... a story that whips together heat, violence, eccentricity, madness and the Gothic ― The Times

This is a wonderful book, by turns funny, sad, full of incident and shot through with grown-up magic reminiscent of Joanne Harris. ― The Daily Telegraph

Eccentric, inventive, and ultimately forgiving... a truly original Southern voice ― Anita Shreve

Product details

    Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tinder Press; New Ed edition (3 Mar. 2003)
    Language ‏ : ‎ English
    Paperback ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
    ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0747266832
    ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0747266839
    Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.8 x 2.7 x 19.8 cm
    Customer reviews: 4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 31,402 ratings