There are books that amaze you, and books that you abhor. And then there are the books that pick you up off your feet and shake you around, introduce new ideas, possibilities, feelings, to you. Books that snatch your breath away. I'm glad to say that this coming-of-age novel is one of the ones that will be remembered forever, having changed a mindset.
Lily Owens killed her mother when she was a small youth, and has since been forced to live with T.Ray, her abusive father on their old peach farm with only a black lady, Rosaleen, as a friend.
Of course, there is those few possessions of her mother's, one of which is a picture of the black Madonna, Tibourn, South Carolina, scrawled on the back. When Lily turns 14 and Rosaleen is arrested for spitting on a white man's shoe--the novel is set in the 1960s--and then beaten up in jail, Lily kidnaps Rosaleen from jail and, together, they embark on a journey to Tibourn. Once there, Lily and Rosaleen locate the bee ladies--three black sisters, August, June, and May--whose honey is represented by the same black Madonna that was Lily's mother's. They allow the two to stay there for the summer.
This is a story of racial triumph, of empowering women, of slight love and of the places we call home.
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