The Secret Life of Bees

By Sue Monk Kidd

This book is about a young girl in the south in 1964, and on one level, it has to take place at that place and at that time. Yet the story is universal -- about what it means to be motherless, who mothers are in our lives, whether the women who gave birth to us or the women who act as mothers to us, or the divine feminine, who is, in this novel, embodied in the Black Madonna . Or in the form of the queen bee, whose only function is to serve as eternal mother to the hive, living in constant darkness, laying eggs all her days. Yet, without her, the hive soon languishes and dies.

As August, the queen bee of the novel, says to Lily, "Our Lady is not some magical being out there somewhere like a fairy godmother. She's not the statue in the parlor. She's something inside you . . . You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mther, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside."

It's a coming of age novel, an American novel, a spiritual novel. Particularly for the motherless, a moving experience. Well written. I'm looking forward to her latest novel.