The Secret Life of BeesA Novel

A coming-of-age tale, a meditation on poverty, and a recounting of the civil-rights-era rolled in one
Sue Monk Kidd's 2002 mega-bestseller, The Secret Life of Bees, doesn't lack for weighty aspirations. This sprawling tale is big enough to contain both a coming-of-age story as well as a recounting of South Carolina during the civil rights movement. As if that's not enough, Kidd also tackles rural poverty writing from a distinctly feminist perspective.

A novelist this ambitious must be able to handle big ideas with grace and Kidd, who authored three substantial memoirs before Secret Life, clearly knows how to do so. Her quick-moving, often surprising plot centers around Lily Owens, an awkward teen who believes she accidentally shot her mother to death as a four-year-old. Wracked with guilt, Lily dearly misses her mother, but she is stuck with her father, T. Ray, a man who seems only capable of resenting her presence and dishing out tortuous punishments. One day Lily runs away with her black housekeeper to search for someone who might be able to tell her about a postcard with a picture of the black Madonna, one of Lily's last links with her dead mother. It's in this search that Kidd carefully brings together the book's many ideas and plotlines, orchestrating a taut climax. Occasionally The Secret Life of Bees veers too far into saccharine sweetness, but for the most part it is a solid and enjoyable story, albeit one leavened with vivid images of segregated South Carolina and an adolescent's search for answers about her beloved mother.