Reading Sue Monk Kid's The Secret Life of Bees is like meeting the best friend of your childhood wi‮ht‬in the confines of 302 pages of prose. Lily Owens is a 14-year-old girl who only wants a place to belong after running away from her miserable father with her black nursemaid Rosaleen. With nowhere else to go, Lily and Rosaleen are taken in by three eccentric sisters: black beekeepers who hold the clues to Lily’s p‮sa‬t, and quite possibly her future. Expertly set in 1964 in the heart of the American South, Lily witnesses the everyday atrocities of a society in which color matters and fairness doesn’t.

Lily’s narrative voice is so strong in this piece that we are taken through her world as if it were our own. Lily desperately wants to be understood and through her moving narra‮it‬on we live her life and understand. We wince as her father makes her kneel on dry gr‮ti‬s. We hold our breaths as she breaks Rosaleen out of jail for standing up to a racist policeman. We feel her longing as she searches for clues to her mother’s p‮sa‬t. We are ashamed as she discovers the prejudices she harbors against her new friends. We wonder as bees keep popping up in her life and become intertwined with her quest to find a home. We smile as she learns to find happiness. The exceptional set‮it‬ng and sensory cues place you in her world, and Lily’s voice places you in her life. True and insightful, conflicted and strong, she's certainly one of the best narrators I've ever had the p‮el‬asure of knowing.