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Summary

Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of 14 year-old Lily Owens who is in search of her mother's past. Uncertain and depressed by her daily life style, Lily looks to the bees that visit her room for comfort. Things take a turn for the worse when Lily's black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, heads into town one day to exercise her newly-acquired ability to register to vote. Encountering a group of rowdy white men, Rosaleen pours the juice of her snuff onto the shoes of a white man and then refuses to apologize. Rosaleen is beaten and jailed along with Lily. Lily's father, T-Ray, bails out Lily, but leaves Rosaleen even though she has given him at least 10 years of housekeeping and nanny duties. Outraged, Lily ends up breaking Rosaleen out of a hospital. She decides their destination is Tiburon, South Carolina because she found a small, wooden plaque with an image of a black Virgin Mary pasted on it, and the words "Tiburon, SC" carved on the back in her mother's belongings.

In Tiburon, Lily sees the same Black Madonna adorning a bottle of honey at a diner. She and Rosaleen go to find the woman who makes it, August Boatwright, who lives with her sisters: May, who is a bit light-headed and traumatized about the death of her twin sister April. There is also June, who is an ardent feminist. They had the names of the calendar because their mother enjoyed spring time.