The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a compelling story about a young girl living in the 1960s. The main character, Lily, is 14 years old, but has the mindset of a 60 year old. She runs away from her abusive dad to live with 3 black, sister beekeepers in Tiburon, South Carolina. This was the only place in the world she knew of to go because her now dead mother had kept a label from the sisters’ honey jars. While living with the sisters, she learns many life lessons and grow as a person. In the novel, there were countless instances where the events that actually took place in the 1960s were mentioned. Some include the first landing on the moon and an incident with Jack Palance. The ways of life in the book also resemble what it was actually like in the 1960s.
The first history connection mentioned in the book is the first landing on the moon. In the book, a man announces over the radio that on July twenty-eighth, a space probe will be launched to the moon. The space probe was called Ranger Seven, and its main goal was to take pictures and bring them back to earth. In the novel, it was not mentioned that the spacecraft was unmanned. This was
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Jack Palance is brought up when Zach, Lily’s friend, comes in to the kitchen and announces to everyone that a white movie star, Jack Palance, is coming to Tiburon and bringing a black woman to watch a movie in the white section with him. It is noted that almost every white person in Tiburon is stirred up about him coming to Tiburon and that white men are going to stand guard outside the theatre. These events did not exactly happen as they were talked about in the novel. It turns out that Palance had actually been signing autographs for blacks in Tuscaloosa, not Tiburon. A rumor started that he was in town to fight for civil rights, although he had actually come to Tuscaloosa to visit family members. Because of the rumors, trouble