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Chapters
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Chapters
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The Secret Life of Bees has 14 chapters.
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Chapters14 items
Chapter 1
Lily Owens is a fourteen-year-old girl living on a peach farm in Sylvan, South Carolina, in 1964. She is haunted by a fragmented memory from when she was four years old: her mothe…
Chapter 2
It is July 4th, 1964, and Rosaleen is planning to go into town to register to vote, a right newly protected by the Civil Rights Act.
Chapter 3
Lily and Rosaleen walk through the South Carolina countryside with no real plan. Lily has the Black Madonna card and the town name Tiburon, so she steers them there.
Chapter 4
Lily and Rosaleen arrive at the Boatwright property, a pink house surrounded by beehives. August Boatwright, a calm and self-possessed Black woman, takes them in without much inte…
Chapter 5
Lily settles into life at the pink house and begins working seriously with the bees. August teaches her about bee behavior and colony structure, using it as a way of talking about…
Chapter 6
Lily settles deeper into life at the Boatwright house and starts working in the honey operation. She learns more about August's past and begins to trust her.
Chapter 7
Lily learns the story of the Black Madonna, the figurehead August's family has centered their spiritual life around for generations.
Chapter 8
Zach is arrested after a group of white boys at a movie theater cause trouble and no one will identify the actual culprit.
Chapter 9
Lily finally learns the truth about her mother, Deborah, from August. August knew Deborah personally.
Chapter 10
Lily processes what she has learned about Deborah and begins the slow work of forgiving her mother. She also has to reckon with August's decision to let her stay even while knowin…
Chapter 11
August finally sits Lily down and tells her the truth about her mother, Deborah. Lily learns that her mother did leave her as a child, which is the thing Lily has feared most.
Chapter 12
Lily begins to climb out of her grief and reconnects with the Boatwright household. August shares more about Deborah's time in Tiburon, including the fact that Deborah stayed with…
Chapter 13
Zach gets out of jail, changed and angrier than before. His experience has hardened his ambition: he is more determined to become a lawyer and fight the system from inside it.
Chapter 14
T. Ray shows up at the pink house looking for Lily.
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