The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, 336 pages

  I can’t say I’ve read any story quite like this one, and I loved it!

  Well, actually I listened to it on CD, narrated by a talented young reader whose voice, energy, and emotion fit perfectly with the story she was telling. Aside from the recording, the words themselves were a pleasure to hear, and I’m sure they would be a pleasure to read.

  This is a coming-of-age novel for the main character and for the Southern U.S. during the Civil Rights era. Lily Owens, a South Carolina white girl raised by her angry peach farmer father turns 14 in 1964. Rosaleen, the black housekeeper who raised her, determinedly sets out to register to vote in their small town. And the next thing you know, the two find themselves a few hours away, with a different family and circle of friends, on a beekeeping farm with a new cast of vivid characters in their lives. Lily’s own past is a mystery to her, a mystery that becomes clearer as she matures in the pages of this book through turmoil, adventure, celebration, injustice, daily life, love, and work.

  Enjoying a good story with likable characters was no surprise to me, but who knew I’d be just as interested to learn about bees? Since finishing the book, I’ve found myself thinking about becoming a beekeeper multiple times. I savor honey more as well. Mmm.

Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allan Gurganus, 718 pages

  I knew this book was historical fiction when I chose it.
  Lucy speaks from the first sentence, chock full of personality. She has given a man who wishes to record her life’s connection with the Civil War permission to visit her in her nursing home between the time she’s up and going in the mornings and when the attendant comes to take her to lunch.
  She was once a child bride of a 40-some-year-old Civil War veteran who trekked off to fight when he was just a boy. Now pushing 100 years old, Lucy has lived through a century of incredible change. Drawing from the memories her husband recounted thousands of times, it seems as though she must have lived beyond her own lifespan, even back through the Civil War herself.
  Lucy has certainly lost her filters, if she ever had any. The woman craves attention and knows how to keep her biographer entertained in response to the questions he asks.
  I was probably 200 pages in when I remembered this was fiction instead of a biography, and I was so upset that Lucy wasn’t real that I had to set the book aside for a week or so until I could accept that and move on.
  Absolutely worth reading!

The Bondwoman’s Narrative: A Novel by Hannah Crafts; Edited By Henry Louis Gates, Jr.-338 pages

  I’ve never before encountered a book with an introduction that goes up to one unnumbered page beyond lxxiv . . . which means 75 pages (I know because I Googled Roman numerals to double check) that I actually read and then felt ended too abruptly. The story by Hannah Crafts is a good story and something that I would have been glad to read, but, thanks to the introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this is a book I want to keep on my shelves to read again.
  The story: fiction with action and suspense, told by a female slave about her life on a southern plantation and her attempted escape toward freedom in the northern U.S.
  The introduction: the true story of how Crafts’ unpublished manuscript made it into the hands of Gates and how he came to believe that “Hannah Crafts” was a real, pre-Civil War, literate female slave.
  The story itself is published as the manuscript was written, complete with some crossed-out words. A few publisher’s additions appear in brackets to help the reader. If the author of the story was, indeed, who Gates believes her to be, “The Bondwoman’s Narrative” is the earliest known novel to be written by an African American woman and the only known novel to be written by a female slave without having gone through the filter of white abolitionists. I expect to reread the story (and the long introduction) again one day.