The Secret Life of Bees (2002) by Sue Monk Kidd was a major success on publication, with 2.5 years on the NY Times Best Seller list & 8 million copies sold internationally.

Influenced by her experiences with racism as child, in The Secret Life of Bees Sue Monk Kidd tells the story of a 14-year-old white girl who leaves her abusive father, T. Ray Owens, a churchgoing peach farmer, and heads off from her hometown of Sylvan, South Carolina in search of information about her mother in the town of Tiburon, also in South Carolina.

With Lily Owens is African American woman Rosaleen who has been working for her father and was recently badly beaten by local white men because she wanted to claim her right to vote.

When her father finally locates his daughter, she refuses to go back home, preferring to stay with August Boatwright, a Black woman who was at one point a carer for Lily’s mother and is now a successful businesswoman.