（外文电子版资料）Kidd, Sue Monk - The Secret Life of Bees.doc

The bees came in the summer of 1964, the summer I turned fourteen and my life went spinning off into a whole new orbit, and I mean whole new orbit. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her harsh, unyielding father, Lily Owens has shaped her entire life around one devastating, blurred memory the afternoon her mother was killed, when Lily was four.Since then, her only real companion has been the fiercehearted, and sometimes just fierce, black woman Rosaleen, who acts as her stand-in mother. When Rosaleen insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily knows its time to spring them both free.They take off in the only direction Lily can think of, toward a town called Tiburon, South Carolina--a name she found on the back of a picture amid the few possessions left by her mother.There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters named May, June, and August. Lily thinks of them as the calendar sisters and enters their mesmerizing secret world of bees and honey, and of the Black Madonna who presides over this household of strong, wise women. Maternal loss and betrayal, guilt and forgiveness entwine in a story that leads Lily to the single thing her heart longs for most.The Secret Life of Bees has a rare wisdom about life-- about mothers and daughters and the women in our lives who become our true mothers. A remarkable story about the divine power of women and the transforming power of love, this is a stunning debut whose rich, assured, irresistible voice gathers us up and doesnt let go, not for a moment. It is the kind of novel that women share with each other and that mothers will hand down to their daughters for years to come.SUE MONK KIDD is the author of the highly acclaimed memoirs The Dance of the Dissident Daughter and When the Heart Waits. She has won a Poets and Writers award for the story that began this novel, as well as a Katherine Anne Porter Award and a Bread Loaf scholarship. Her fiction has appeared in several liter