Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.
Exposition (Initial Situation)
A Girl with a Serious Case of the Bees, er, Blues
Lily Owens, the book's narrator, welcomes us into her world a few days before her 14th birthday. She seems to have a vivid imagination, this Lily; when the book opens, she claims swarms of bees visit her every night and create pretty air shows in her room. It's left ambiguous whether the bee invasion is real or imagined, but it's no wonder Lily would create companions for herself, as she's quite lonely—her father, T. Ray, is kind of a beast, and her mother, Deborah, died when she was younger. Luckily, she does get along with Rosaleen, the woman who looks after her.
Rising Action (Conflict, Complication)
History Happens
When Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act, Rosaleen (who is African American) decides she's going to hightail it into town to register to vote, pronto. Lily is kind of bummed out about her upcoming birthday (which her father will certainly ignore) and asks to tag along so she at least gets out of the house on her big day.
Unfortunately, that simple outing gets a lot more complicated than either woman had anticipated. What should have been a day of triumph for Rosaleen (and at least a pleasant birthday outing for Lily) turns into a run-in with the police, which ends with Rosaleen and Lily in jail. Lily is released as soon as T. Ray picks her up, but after a particularly nasty argument with him, she quickly realizes that life in his house represents its own kind of prison—and she's got to break out. Knowing that Rosaleen remains in danger in jail, she resolves to break Rosaleen out as well.
She is successful on both counts, and they head to Tiburon, South Carolina, where she has reason to believe her mother had friends. Because she never really knew her mother (and, er, was accidentally responsible for her death) Lily has a lot of issues to work through, and she's kind of stumbling toward doing that by going to Tiburon.
She finds her mother's friends (the Boatwright sisters) pretty easily. However, she does not reveal herself as her mother's daughter right away, as she's not quite ready—she basically just says they need a place to stay. August Boatwright, the oldest sister/matriarch of the bunch (and resident bee keeper), agrees to take them in, making Lily her apprentice and putting Rosaleen to work in the kitchen. Life proceeds fairly pleasantly from there, until . . .
Climax (Crisis, Turning Point)
Things Fall Apart
Everything seems to fall apart for the Boatwrights and Lily right around the same time. The crisis point starts when Zach, August's other apprentice beekeeper, gets arrested for something he didn't do. August's super-empathetic and fragile sister, May, is so devastated that she commits suicide, which in turn devastates the Boatwrights, Lily, Rosaleen, and all of their friends. Around this time, Lily comes to realize she has put all her cards on the table with August and find out how exactly her mother knew the Boatwrights. When she finally has that talk with August, she gets her own upsetting news: her mother had left her as a toddler. While she knew that Deborah had left T. Ray, Lily had, up to that point, refused to believe that Deborah had left her. Naturally, she feels destroyed in the wake of the news. After staying in a funk that lasts several days, though, she finally comes to terms with it—with a little help from August and Rosaleen, of course.
Falling Action
Daddy Issues
Things kind of calm down from there . . . but there's still that tiny issue of Rosaleen and Lily being fugitives. Lily's situation is resolved pretty quickly during stage, however, when T. Ray comes roaring into town, demanding that she accompany him back to Sylvan. After a scary confrontation between the two, Lily manages to calm him down and convinces him to let her stay. He leaves peacefully.
Resolution (Denouement)
Home
With August and Rosaleen, Lily Owens finally seems to have a found a real home at the end of the novel. She notes that a local lawyer, Clayton Forrest, is working on getting Rosaleen's legal troubles back in Sylvan cleared up, which means her situation will be resolved soon as well. Although Lily didn't necessarily get the answers she was hoping for in Tiburon, she ends up with a team of supportive, maternal figures that helped her heal, grow, and move ahead.