The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, 2002

The Secret Life of Bees is one of those books that transport you to another time and place.  The time is 1964 and the place is South Carolina. 

Similar to The Help, The Secret Life of Bees is filled with strong African-American female characters who believe passionately in their civil rights.

The story is narrated by a young girl, Lily, who ends up running away with her Nanny in search of answers to her dead mother's past.

Memorable characters help Lily through her journey, including sister who are named after months: April, May, June, and August; mean spirited T. Ray; speak-her-mind Rosaleen; strong, heroic Zach; and thousands of buzzing bees.

Spiritual Strength
Heavy in spiritual symbolism, a black Madonna serves as a focal point throughout the story.

Having seen statues of Black Marys throughout cathedrals in Spain, I remember the images being jarring and powerful.  However, after reading the rituals around Black Mary in The Secret Life of Bees, I have a greater sense of awe and appreciation.

An excerpt that speaks to the spiritual theme in the novel:

   "Our Lady is not some magical being out of somewhere, like a fairy godmother.  She's not the statue in the parlor.  She's something inside of you.  Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
   "Our Lady is inside me," I repeated, not sure I did.
   "You have to find a mother inside yourself.  We all do.  Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves."  She held out her hand to me.  "Give me your hand."
   I lifted my left hand and placed it in hers.  She took it and pressed the flat of my palm up against my chest, over my beating heart.  "You don't have to put your hand on Mary's heart to get strength and consolation and rescue, and all the other things we need to get through life," she said.  "You can place it right here on your own hear.  Your own heart."
...
   "When you're unsure of yourself," she said, "when you start pulling back into doubt and small living, she's the one inside saying, 'Get up from there and live like the glorious girl you are.'  She's the power inside you, you understand?"
   Her hands stayed where they were but released their pressure.  "And whatever it is that keeps widening your heart, that's Mary, too, not only the power inside you but the love.  And when you get down to it, Lily, that' the only purpose grand enough for a human life.  Not just to love - but to persist in love."

A Conversation with Sue Monk Kidd
As an aspiring, but non-practicing, writer, I was particularly interested in the following answer from Kidd about writing her novel:

What was the process of writing the novel? How long did it take to complete it?

The novel began as a short story in 1993. At the time I wrote it, I wanted to develop the story into a novel, but I'd only just begun to write fiction, and felt I needed more time as an apprentice before taking on a novel. I put the story aside.

Years later I was invited to read my fiction at the National Arts Club in New York. I dug out my short story, "The Secret Life of Bees." After the reading, I was again filled with the desire to turn it into a novel. I still didn't feel ready, but I figured I might never feel ready, and meanwhile I wasn't getting any younger.

It took me a little over three years to complete the novel. The process of writing it was a constant balancing act between what writing teacher Leon Surmelian referred to as "measure and madness."

He suggested that writing fiction should be a blend of these two things. That struck me as exactly true. On one hand, I relied on some very meticulous "measures," such as character studies, scene diagrams, layouts of the pink house and the honey house. I had a big notebook where I worked out the underlying structure of the book. I relied more heavily, however, on trying to conjure "madness," which I think of as an inexplicable and infectious magic that somehow flows into the work.

Before I started the novel, I created a collage of images that vividly caught my attention. They included a pink house, a trio of African-American women, and a wailing wall. I propped the collage on my desk with no idea how, or even whether, these things would turn up in the novel.

Inducing "madness" also meant that I often left my desk to sit on the dock overlooking the tidal creek behind our house and engage in a stream of reverie about the story. I considered this earnest work.