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The Secret Life of BORING! Sue Monk Kidd, like young Lily a daughter of the South, is perhaps best known for her memoir The Dance of the Dissident Daughter. In this, her first novel, she's avoided those themes heretofore apparently part and parcel of southern literature - a noble family fallen on hard times, a hereditary streak of madness; all so essential to the work of a Conroy or a Faulkner. Kidd instead concentrates on a single facet of the American South: learning to gauge the boundary between races. Kidd has painted a little corner of the South, where life among "the coloreds" is seen through the eyes of a young white girl. Casual racism is imputed to all but a few whites, including Lily herself. The greatest truth that Lily learns from the bees is that without a queen, the hive will die. Without a mother - her own queen - Lily is dying inside, and she cannot come alive until she finds her new queen in Tiburon. We watch as Lily comes of age, learning hard lessons and harder truths. We watch as she learns the truth that so few of her time and place seemed to know; the truth that it is friendship and caring and love that bind people together, not the color of their skin. The world was such a different place in 1964, a world where schools, swimming pools, drinking fountains - indeed, everything - were segregated. It is such a different place today, but not so different as it could be; not so different as it should be. We're left to wonder, whatever happened to the freckle-faced girl who did so much growing up that summer? Did she go on to become the writer she wanted to be? Did she finally learn how to live, and how to love? Find out for yourself. Read this wonderful book. In addition to The Secret Life of Bees, I also recommend an obscure little romance, an Amazon quick-pick, called "The Losers Club: Complete Restored Edition" by Richard Perez - strange and wonderful.