Sue Monk Kidd’s “The Secret Life of Bees” tells the story of Lily Owens, a 14 year old white girl in South Carolina, living on a peach farm with her verbally and mentally abusive father, whom she does not call daddy, but rather T. Ray. Her life is revolved around her blurred memory of the afternoon when her mother was killed. Lily is dealing with the absence of her mother and she has her “stand-in” mother Rosaleen, a black woman who is their housekeeper. Lily’s most prized possessions are the items of her mother’s that remain after she is gone, a picture of her mother Deborah and a wooden picture of black Mary. On the back of the picture of black Mary “Tiburon, South Carolina” is written on the back of it. After Rosaleen attempts to vote and ends up in injured and in jail, Lily and her escape from the hospital and began hitch-hiking to Tiburon, South Carolina, in Lily’s attempt to trace down evidence of her mother. As soon as they arrive in South Carolina, they go to a general store for lunch and Lily recognizes the same black mary that she has a picture of on a bottle of honey being sold at the store. They receive directions to the place where the honey came from, the Boatwright residence and this is where they stay for the rest of the novel. They meet the Boatwright sisters, August, May and June.