{"product_id":"the-secret-life-of-bees-easton-press-signed-collectors-edition","title":"The Secret Life of Bees (Easton Press Signed Collector's Edition)","description":"\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKIDD, Sue Monk.\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cem\u003eThe Secret Life of Bees.\u003c\/em\u003e Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 2015.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eOctavo. Full brown leather. Spine with four raised bands, 22-carat gilt accents. Gilt lettering and design to covers and fore-edges. All edges gilt. Moiré silk endpapers. Satin ribbon page marker. 302 pp. \u003cstrong\u003eSigned Collector's Edition. Part of the Easton Press Signed Modern Classics series. Signed by the author on the special signature page. Includes signed Certificate of Authenticity, edition card, and bookplate adhered to front endpaper.\u003c\/strong\u003e Originally published New York: Viking Press, 2002.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eSue Monk Kidd (b. 1948) grew up in Sylvester, Georgia, trained as a registered nurse, and came to writing through religious memoir before producing, in her mid-fifties, the debut novel that spent more than a hundred weeks on the \u003cem\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/em\u003e bestseller list, sold more than six million copies in the United States alone, and was translated into thirty-six languages. The \u003cem\u003eBaltimore Sun\u003c\/em\u003e described her as \"a direct literary descendant of Carson McCullers\" — a comparison that captures something of the novel's Southern Gothic atmosphere and its feel for the particular textures of rural Southern life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eThe novel is set in South Carolina in the summer of 1964, the year of the Civil Rights Act. Lily Owens is fourteen years old and has carried since early childhood the blurred and terrible memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. Her only companion is her caretaker Rosaleen, a fierce-hearted Black woman who, while attempting to register to vote, insults three of the town's most dangerous racists and is arrested. Lily, knowing she cannot leave Rosaleen behind, breaks her out of custody and the two flee together to Tiburon — a town whose name Lily found on a piece of paper among her dead mother's few possessions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eIn Tiburon they are taken in by the Boatwright sisters: August, May, and June, three Black women who keep bees and produce honey under the label of the Black Madonna. August, the eldest, is a woman of extraordinary intelligence and composure who becomes, without announcement or sentimentality, the mother figure Lily has spent her life without. The novel moves between the domestic world of the Boatwright household — the beehives, the honey house, the peculiar private religion the sisters have constructed around a carved wooden Black Madonna — and Lily's gradual uncovering of what her mother's life actually was, which turns out to be both harder and more sustaining than she had expected.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eThe novel was adapted into a film in 2008 directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, with Dakota Fanning as Lily and Queen Latifah as August, alongside Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson, and Sophie Okonedo, and into a stage musical in 2010.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFine. \u003c\/strong\u003ePresenting as new.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eThis book is currently not on display in store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: \u003ca href=\"mailto:rarebooks@harryhartog.com.au\" title=\"Harry Hartog Rare Book Department\"\u003erarebooks@harryhartog.com.au\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCatalogue Number: HH000524\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sue Monk Kidd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49072415932659,"sku":"1110002990496","price":120.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0634\/4284\/5939\/files\/1_98be4e1a-fc8e-465e-a048-a1391b62b712.png?v=1779087108","url":"https:\/\/www.harryhartog.com.au\/products\/the-secret-life-of-bees-easton-press-signed-collectors-edition","provider":"Harry Hartog Bookseller","version":"1.0","type":"link"}