book of the day

the secret life of bees by sue monk kidd

i just finished this yesterday. i wanted to savor it. what lovely imagines flow throughout this book (and some NOT so lovely as well). of course it's NOT really about bees at all......... i could feel lily's pain and joy, i could feel the racism. i could feel the water and taste the honey. i can see the bright pink house (with the matching washer and dryer). i could touch the cool stones on may's wall. i would LOVE to have tea with lily and rosaleen and the calendar sisters and the daughter's of mary.

oh, my mother had a small beautiful picture of the black madonna on her (and my dad's) bedroom wall. it's still there even though my mother is gone.

Living on a peach farm in South Carolina
with her harsh, unyielding father, Lily Owens has shaped her entire life around
one devastating, blurred memory--the afternoon her mother was killed, when Lily
was four. Since then, her only real companion has been the fierce-hearted, and
sometimes just fierce, black woman Rosaleen, who acts as her “stand-in mother.”
When Rosaleen insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily knows it's time
to spring them both free. They take off in the only direction Lily can think of,
toward a town called Tiburon, South Carolina--a name she found on the back of a
picture amid the few possessions left by her mother. There they are taken in by
an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters named May, June, and August. Lily
thinks of them as the calendar sisters and enters their mesmerizing secret world
of bees and honey, and of the Black Madonna who presides over this household of
strong, wise women. Maternal loss and betrayal, guilt and forgiveness entwine in
a story that leads Lily to the single thing her heart longs for most. The Secret
Life of Bees has a rare wisdom about life--about mothers and daughters and the
women in our lives who become our true mothers. A remarkable story about the
divine power of women and the transforming power of love, this is a stunning
debut whose rich, assured, irresistible voice gathers us up and doesn't let go,
not for a moment. It is the kind of novel that women share with each other and
that mothers will hand down to their daughters for years to come.