The Secret Life of Bees

Lily, the book’s protagonist, mentions the summer of 1964 as the summer that the bees came and her life changed forever. Lily recounts being four years old and picking up a gun that was dropped on the floor during a fight her parents were having. She picked it up and it went off, killing her mother. Lily’s father, T. Ray, is cold and distant and often cruel to Lily. She thinks of him as so unlike a father that she calls him T. Ray. Rosaleen previously worked in T. Ray’s orchard, but after Lily’s mother dies, T. Ray pulls her from the orchard and brings her to the house, where she cares for Lily and their home. Lily calls Rosaleen her “stand-in mother.” This chapter establishes what Lily’s life has been like up until the summer of 1964 and how her identity is wrapped up in her being motherless.

The chapter ends with Lily accompanying Rosaleen as she registers to vote. This is the summer that Johnson signed the Civil Right Act into law. On the way to register, Rosaleen is harassed by some white men, and both Lily and Rosaleen are arrested after Rosaleen pours her snuff bottle on the white men’s shoes.