Lily Owens Timeline and Summary

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• Lily is a lonely 13-year-old girl who misses her late mother, despises her abusive father, and yearns for a life with a bit more love in it.
• On the day of her 14th birthday, she accompanies Rosaleen, the woman who takes care of her, into town. Rosaleen gets into a fight with some men who start harassing her, and she and Lily end up in jail.
• T. Ray comes and fetches Lily pretty quickly, but they have a huge argument, and Lily realizes she needs to get out of that house.
• She goes and busts Rosaleen out of police custody, and the two women make their way to Tiburon, S.C., where Lily believes she will find friends of her mother's.
• She quickly locates the Boatwright sisters and finagles an invitation to stay there and work for them. However, she's not completely honest about her background or reason for being there.
• She takes to life at the Boatwright house—including beekeeping—easily. Also, she befriends the other apprentice beekeeper, Zach. They would like to get romantically involved but decide it's too dangerous due to race relations at that time (since Lily is white and Zach is black).
• She and August eventually have a heart-to-heart in which Lily reveals her identity and reasons for being on the run. She learns a lot of new information about her mother from August, who, it turns out, had known Lily's mom since she was a child. Lily finds a lot of the information upsetting initially, but she gets over it in due time.
• Lily ends up being able to stay with August indefinitely, after convincing T. Ray she's better off where she is. Rosaleen stays, too, and so they end up one big happy family.