Lily Owens has shaped her life around one devastating, blurred, memory -- the afternoon her mother was killed, when Lily was four. Since then, her only real companion on the peach farm of her harsh, unyielding father has been a fierce-hearted black woman, Rosaleen, her "stand-in mother."

When Rosaleen insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily knows it is time to spring them both free. She and Rosaleen take off for a town called Tiburon, South Carolina, a name she found on the back of a picture amid the few possessions left by her mother.

They are taken in by three black, bee-keeping sisters. Lily enters their mesmerizing secret world of bees and honey, and of the Black Madonna who presides over this household of strong, wise women -- a place where ultimately she can find the single thing her heart longs for most.