The Secret Life of Bees. Book Review

Laura Medhurst
Smith, 2nd
The Secret Life of Bees


The most important thing for one little girl is love and female divinity.
This book is about four beekeeping sisters and their care of Miss Lily Owens, who ran away from her peach farm in South Carolina during the confusing times of racism during the . Her Father, known as T. Ray, is someone who she can’t call “daddy” and someone in which she realizes that his poor treatment of her has made her come to the realization that she has played a horrible part in her mother’s death. After Rosaleen Davis, her black careteaker is affronted by a group of racists because of her tendency to speak her mind and defend herself gets her into trouble, Lily rescues her from the hospital, intending to flee to Tiburon, a place written on the back of one of her mother’s belongings, a picture of a black Mary carved on a piece of wood. Lily and Rosaleen go to town to find a source of food when they find a couple jars have that picture of the same black Mary, and investigate the store and ask the store-owner who makes these jars of honey. They find out it is a beekeeper named August Boatwright, a unique black woman. Lily comes to love them and accept herself for who she really is after her experience there and the death of May, one of the four sisters and through the support of a new found friend and love-interest, Zach Taylor. At the end, she even confronts her father, becomes who she always wanted to be, a writer, and learns that true love and the search for one’s place among others is the most important thing in life.