This is a wonderful book. The story starts out sad but becomes a beacon of hope and love in the later chapters -- the book is sad, funny, melancholic and deeply touching. The main subject of the book is female power, and strength that women can give to each other, situated against a back-drop of the civil rights movement in the 1960's in America's South.

Sasha read this book first after a very good review in The Economist and recommended the Secret Life of Bees to me.

I read it on a the bus from New York to Washington D.C.; I started reading when we left Times Square and finished the last chapter two minutes before the bus stopped in D.C. In the metro home I read the last part of the book, an interview with the author, who lived in South Carolina in 1964 herself.