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Set (01) in the American South in 1964, the year of the Civil Rights Act and intensifying racial unrest, Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees is a powerful story of coming-of-age, the ability of love to transform our lives, and the often unacknowledged longing for the universal feminine divine. Addressing (02) the wounds of loss, betrayal, and the scarcity of love, (03) Kidd demonstrates the power of women coming together to heal those wounds, to mother each one and themselves, and to create a sanctuary of true Family and home.

Isolated on a South Carolina peach farm with a neglectful and harsh father, T. Ray, fourteen-year-old Lily Owens has spent much of her life longing for her mother, who died amid mysterious circumstances when Lily was four years old. To make matters worse, her father tells Lily that she accidentally killed her mother.

(KIDD, Sue Monk. The secret life of bees. New York: Penguin Readers, 2003, p.2.)

Glossary:

acknowledged adj admitted or recognized as being true or important.

harsh adj harsh conditions or places are unpleasant and difficult to live in: the harsh environment of the desert.

longing n a strong feeling of wanting someone or something.

wound n an injury in which your skin or flesh is damaged, often seriously. When a wound gets better it heals.

From the information given in this excerpt of the introduction to the book, one can say that The Secret Life of Bees