Summary:
Lily Owens is a 14 year-old white girl growing up on a peach farm in rural South Carolina in the turbulent 1960s with her abusive father, T. Ray, and Rosaleen, a black field worker her father hired to keep house and look after Lily.

When Rosaleen insults three white men and is consequently jailed and beaten, Lily breaks her out and they run away. They travel to Tiburon, South Carolina, where Lily hopes to learn more about her mother, whom she accidentally killed when she was four years old. Lily has few memories of her mother except for a photo, a picture of the Black Madonna and a pair of gloves.

Lily and Rosaleen are taken in by three black women. One of these women is a beekeeper. While there Lily learns about beekeeping, racial injustice, female companionship and the choices her mother made years before.

I would recommend this book!

Why?
If you enjoy reading about the relationships between women and the thoughts and musing of a 14 year old girl plus the setting of the rural South during the Civil Rights movement, you will enjoy this book. Lily's thoughts are genuine, reflecting the conflicting emotions girls this age feel. The characters in this book are all very complex and unique.

This is a Young Adult book, and it provides teens with a realistic exposure to prejudice as it existed in the deep South during the beginning of the Civil Rights movement. There is some minor violence, some course language (Lily's favorite curse word is "sh*tbucket") and an implied sexual encounter between Lily and a young black boy helping tend the bees.

I enjoyed this book because the story started on the very first page, the characters seemed real and although there was a lot of description of scenery, it did not ramble on and on for pages. The characters themselves were the strongest aspect of this book

Employee Initials: KT Review Date: August 2003

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