My book club book this month. It is by Sue Monk Kidd.

The basic storyline from the back flap says that it is about a 14 year old white girl named Lily who lives in South Carolina in the 60’s. Her mother dies tragically when she is 4 and she bonds with her african-american housekeeper. They end up running away from her abusive father and some raciest guys who are out for the housekeeper. They run to a town some several hours away and are taken in by three refined african-american sisters who are beekeepers. Somewhere lies the secret to Lily’s mother and the day she died from what I’ve been able to see.

I’ve completed 81 pages, 4 chapters. There are 300 pages and I must finish by Thursday evening at 8.

I’ve gotten thru the parts where you learn about the mother’s death, the abuse of the father, and the events leading up to the two fleeing their small town. They have only just met the three sister beekeepers and have spent their first night there.

Now, my reflections. Hopefully this will not be too spoilerish if anyone wants to read this book. At this point, I’m holding off recommending it till I finish.

The book got off to what I felt was a slow start for me. It did not catch my interest right away and so I had to plow through. I’ve had now, 2 people tell me how great the book is. Plus it is book club so I wanted to continue. I’m not sure why but it didn’t strike a cord with me.

The book is written in first person so it is very interesting to see this 14 year old who one minute seems to think of this black housekeeper as a mother but the next minute shows signs of slight prejudice. Which you can’t actually blame her for considering where she lived and what year it was. She’s 14 and you can see she’s tying to understand why things are the way they are racially. Which I like. She even at one point realizes she does have some prejudice and you hope that since she realizes it she will thus be able to dig her way out of it.

She’s spent a great deal of time lying and trying to get herself out of her circumstances and you can’t help but feel for her. Her lying is wrong and not the best way to go about things, but she’s 14 and you know she probably just can’t think of any way to explain things the way they are. She’s starting to realize though that lying is not so easy and that perhaps people aren’t believing as she would like them to be.

She’s a very intelligent girl but she’s being held back by the treatment she’s gotten from the people she grew up with. Like many girls in the south at that time (and frankly some girls in the south still) she had no aspirations to greatness and just figured she’d live her whole life in that town and if she was lucky maybe she’d go to beauty school. But one day a teacher tells her how smart she is and that she can do anything and she realizes she has more potential than people would have her readily believe.

This made me think about how in life it tends to go the other way. As a child we think we can do anything. “I’m going to colonize Mars” and “I want to be a doctor and a pilot and…” But as we get older we realize more and more the limits that are upon us. So our dreams get smaller and smaller. Hers are only just growing.

Also, we are watching her through those formative years of womanhood. As she is growing from little girl into a woman. She’s still got the inhibitians of a child but she’s starting to gain modesty of a woman.

I’m hoping that as the book says we will delve into the relationship of these four black women and one white girl. The relationship a teen girl has with the women in her life.

Anyway, this is where I’m at now.

I did enjoy the girl talking so innocently about her first cycle. It was almost that childlike dreaminess. But it made me laugh out loud because the wording was almost word from word from this cheesy health cartoon I watched in 8th grade about puberty. I mean down to the relating it to flowers and petals. Bwahahahahaha. Wonder if the writer say the same video.