{"product_id":"secret-life-bookmark-bees-literary-gift-pink-house-honey-scene","title":"Secret Life Bookmark | Bees | Literary Gift | Pink House | Honey Scene","description":"She found her mothers in the most unexpected place and they were exactly right.\n\nFor every reader who walked into the pink house on the Boatwright property and never quite walked back out.\nFor every reader who understood that August Boatwright is one of the great women in American fiction and that what she offers Lily Owens is not just shelter but the specific grace of being seen completely by someone who has no reason to see you and every reason to love you anyway.\nFor every reader who has ever found their mothers in an unexpected place — in a friendship, in a community, in a house full of women who chose each other — and felt the particular relief of that finding, the sense of having arrived somewhere that was always going to be home even though you did not know it existed until you found it.\nThis bookmark is for all of you. The pink house is always open.\n\n✦ ABOUT THIS BOOKMARK\nA richly illustrated scene of the Boatwright property in Tiburon South Carolina on an August afternoon in 1964 — the pink house and the honey house and the hives and the low country landscape all rendered as one continuous immersive world, the heat visible in the quality of the light, the hum of the bees present as a warm gold movement that permeates everything in the scene.\nThe South Carolina summer sky fills the upper portion of the composition in the deep saturated blue of a low country August — enormous and hot, the particular blue that exists only in the South in summer when the humidity makes the air slightly luminous. Cumulus clouds build in the upper sky — the afternoon thundercloud formation of a South Carolina August that will become a storm by four and be gone by five and leave everything smelling like wet earth and honeysuckle.\nAugust Boatwright's pink house is present — the particular shade of pink she chose because pink is the color of the highest hope, the house warm and slightly faded in the summer sun, the porch with its rocking chairs and the screen door and the honeysuckle growing at the porch post. The hive boxes are arranged in the yard and the field beyond, some with bees working around their entrances visible as small warm gold points of movement in the afternoon light.\nBees move through the entire composition — the constant purposeful presence of bees going about their particular business, moving from the hives to the clover and the wildflowers and back, rendered as small warm gold points of light and movement that give the entire scene a sense of alive purposeful warmth. Ten thousand bees working together becoming something extraordinary. Which is also the whole story of the Boatwright sisters and what they built.\nThe honey house glows warm amber in the composition — the small outbuilding where August processes the honey, jars of honey on the shelves catching the light and glowing with the particular warm gold that is the most beautiful color in the entire novel. A dark wooden feminine figure is visible in the warm interior — Our Lady of Chains, the Black Madonna, steady and certain of her own significance.\nA jar of Black Madonna Honey on the porch railing catches the afternoon light — the honey jar with the handwritten label that brought Lily to Tiburon in the first place. The label that changed everything. The amber glowing warm against the summer afternoon.\nWildflowers and clover fill the lower portion of the scene — the flowers that the bees visit, the flowers that Lily walked through, the particular low country wildflowers of a South Carolina August in full warm bloom.\nThe warm amber of honey and the warm pink of the house and the warm gold of the bees moving through the afternoon light build toward the warmest and most saturated point of the entire scene — the feeling of having arrived somewhere that was always going to be home.\n\n✦ BOOKMARK DETAILS\n— Size: 2.15 inches wide by 6.75 inches tall — Printed on premium card stock — Full color illustration front with matte finish — Arrives in a kraft envelope — Ready to use in your copy of The Secret Life of Bees the moment it arrives\n\n✦ PERFECT FOR\n— Every reader who has loved The Secret Life of Bees and wanted to live in the pink house — Fans of Sue Monk Kidd and her extraordinary body of work — Readers who love Southern fiction and the specific beauty of the South Carolina low country — Book clubs — this novel generates some of the most powerful and most honest book club conversations of any American novel assigned in the last twenty five years — Anyone who has ever found their community of women and understood what August Boatwright was offering — Bee lovers and honey enthusiasts who are also book lovers which is a more common combination than you might expect — Women's fiction readers who appreciate a story about women choosing each other across every difference — Gifts for the reader who recommended this book to you and was completely right about it — Teachers who assign this novel — this bookmark is the companion gift that honors why they assign it — Birthdays and holidays for the Southern fiction reader in your life — Treating yourself — August Boatwright would want you to and her opinion is the one that matters\n\n✦ A NOTE ON THE PINK HOUSE\nAugust Boatwright chose pink because pink is the color of the highest hope.\nShe did not choose it because it was conventional or because anyone suggested it or because she thought it would be received well by the neighbors. She chose it because of what it meant and what she intended and what she was building on that property in Tiburon,South Carolina.\nThe pink house is in this bookmark. It is the right shade of pink. It is faded slightly from the South Carolina sun and it is still the color of the highest hope and it will always be the color of the highest hope because August chose it with complete intention and three hundred years of Owens women could not have said it better themselves.\n\n✦ THE HONEY JAR\nThe Black Madonna Honey label is on the jar in this bookmark. The jar that Lily found in her dead mother's things. The jar that had a Tiburon, South Carolina address on it. The jar that Lily followed across the state to find the woman who made the honey and what Lily found was not just the honey and not just August Boatwright but the entire world that this bookmark is trying to show you.\nThe honey glows amber in the afternoon light. It always will.\n\n✦ A WORD ABOUT AUGUST BOATWRIGHT\nAugust Boatwright is one of the great women in American fiction. She is a Black beekeeper in South Carolina in 1964 who has built something sacred and practical and warm on her property and who extends that warmth to a fourteen year old white girl on the run without asking for explanations first because August Boatwright understands that what a person needs most arrives before they are ready to explain why they need it.\nThis bookmark is a tribute to August and to June and to May and to every woman who has ever built something like what they built on that property in Tiburon.\n\n✦ ALSO IN OUR SHOP\nThis bookmark is part of our Southern Fiction and Women's Literary Collection — bookmarks honoring the great novels of the American South and the stories of women choosing each other across every difference. See our shop for our complete collection including bookmarks for other beloved Southern literary works.\n\n✦ SHIPPING\nShips within 3 to 5 business days. Arrives in a kraft envelope so your bookmark comes to you simply and beautifully — ready to use immediately. Think of it as a jar of Black Madonna Honey. Small and warm and worth everything.\n\n✦ ABOUT OUR SHOP\nEvery bookmark in our shop is designed and produced professionally by us — made with care in our own studio and printed on premium materials we stand behind completely. We are a small passionate operation and we treat every order like it matters because it does.\nWe are committed to five star service on every single order — from the moment you click to the moment your bookmark arrives at your door flat and perfect and ready to live inside your favorite book. If anything is ever less than exactly right please reach out and we will make it right immediately. We respond to every message promptly and we mean it — real people, real responses, no automated runaround.\nThank you for supporting a small independent bookmark maker. It means everything to us and we do not take it for granted. We hope this bookmark finds exactly the right book and exactly the right reader.\n\nMichelle and Julie \nThe Luna and Loom 📚","brand":"The Luna and Loom","offers":[{"title":"One Bookmark","offer_id":49291092394228,"sku":"B27","price":4.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Set of Three","offer_id":49291092426996,"sku":null,"price":4.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0835\/4902\/8596\/files\/8c8bd58d-il_fullxfull.8112621073_8obb.jpg?v=1788192186","url":"https:\/\/thelunaandloom.com\/products\/secret-life-bookmark-bees-literary-gift-pink-house-honey-scene","provider":"The Luna and Loom","version":"1.0","type":"link"}