In Sue Monk Kidd’s first novel, 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their South Carolina peach farm, spends hours imagining a happy infancy* when she was loved and taken care of by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers.

    These fantasies* are her heart’s answer to the family story that as a 4-year-old child, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother.

    All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words “Tiburon, South Carolina” written on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are key elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest.

    When Lily’s beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult* a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to leave town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of — Tiburon, South Carolina — determined to find out more about her dead mother. It turns out that the town is headquarters of Black Madonna Honey, produced by three middle-aged black sisters, August, June and May Boatwright. The “Calendar sisters” take in the fugitives*, putting Lily to work in the honey house, where for the first time in years she’s happy.

    “The Secret Life of Bees” is a carefully crafted novel with an inspired depiction of character.

    The book is available at jd.com.

    (SD-Agencies)