Bonnie A. (Mizzou) - reviewed on 2/7/2007 + 27 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

Fourteen-year-old Lily Owens has only a blurred memory of her mother, as she is growing up in Sylvan, South Carolina, with her daddy, T. Ray, and Rosaleen, her black "stand-in mother". It's the Sixties, and when self-respecting Rosaleen has a run-in with three of the biggest racists in town, Lily takes up her cause and engineers Rosaleen's escape, and her own. The two run away to the town written on the back of a mysterious photo that Lily feels holds the secret to her mother's past. They become members of the household of an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters. Lily learns about beekeeping, the Black Madonna, and the secret of her mother's past, and at last is able to reconcile with her 'unloving' father, and to move confidently into young womanhood.

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