Dear Sue Monk Kidd Readers: About two years ago, at the same time The Secret Life of Bees was published, www.suemonkkidd.com went live on the internet. An initial feature of the website was an online reading group guide. We never imagined that so many would log on to share thoughtful ruminations on issues of race, parenting, religion and spiritual growth, individuality, forgiveness, and wisdom, to name just some of the topics in our discussion forum. In retrospect, we shouldn’t have been so surprised. Bees has struck a resounding chord among readers of contemporary literature, becoming by far the most popular reading group choice in America. So, we at the Penguin Group are launching a monthly newsletter to unite the over two million readers and countless reading groups across the country that have discovered Sue Monk Kidd. We’ll start modestly, featuring one question per month, and we’ll jump-start the conversation by featuring some of the responses already posted in our discussion forum. We hope you’ll log on to the forum with additional comments, and that you’ll forward the newsletter to other readers and friends that enjoy a lively roundtable discussion. Sue Monk Kidd will make occasional contributions as well. For this inaugural edition Sue has written a lovely article about the inspiration for her next novel The Mermaid Chair. It's vintage Sue, expressing a quality of thought in flowing prose that tantalizes and leaves you wanting more. Sue's writing schedule and speaking engagements take up a great deal of her time, so we can't promise a gem like this every month. But from time to time she will surprise us with something, and we'll share it with you. As we said, it’s a modest start, but from such inauspicious beginnings great things happen. We hope you’ll join us, and we hope you’ll be in touch. And for now, let’s enjoy being part of a very large group of people talking about a great book. Sincerely, The Penguin Group (USA) Inc. ****************** For the last two years I've been more or less “living” on Egret Island, small barrier island off the coast of South Carolina. It has no bridge, only a ferry, which is really an old pontoon boat called The Island Dog. The boat is named for a black lab named Max who lives on the island and belongs to everyone and no one. The island brims with the beauty of the Low Country: winding tidal creeks, vast salt marshes, thickets of palmetto palms, and the majestic Great Egrets that teem in the trees along the water. The small number of people who live on the island get about in golf carts. There are no cars allowed there. No golf courses, either. Tourists ferry over from Charleston to glimpse the egrets or the slave cemetery, but mostly to visit a Benedictine monastery that was built on the island in the 1930s. Inside the Abbey church resides a beautiful chair ornately carved with mermaids and dedicated to a Celtic saint who was a mermaid before her conversion or so the legend goes. The chair is said to possess mysterious powers and hidden meanings. Just ask the monks. Or ask the circle of island women who are bonded by a deep and enduring ritual. Better yet, ask Jessie Sullivan, who grew up on the island and is summoned home one day to cope with a rather startling (you could even say bizarre) situation with her mother. The chair plays a pivotal role in Jessie's story, a story she began with these words: “In the middle of my marriage, when I was above all Hugh's wife, one of those unambiguous women with no desire to disturb the universe, I fell in love with a Benedictine monk. I marvel at how good I was before I met him. So few people know what they're capable of.... I promise you, no one judges me more harshly than I do myself; I caused a brilliant wreckage. Some say I fell from grace; they're being kind. I didn't fall. I dove.” I guess you've figured out that what I'm describing is the world of my new novel, The Mermaid Chair. I really was living on Egret Island, but only in my imagination. Not that the imaginary realm can't possess a “realness” all its own. For instance, I recall getting a letter from a reader in the Midwest who said she drove to South Carolina, hoping to visit the towns in The Secret Life of Bees, only to discover they didn't exist anywhere but in the book! One of my biggest surprises when I wrote The Secret Life of Bees was how tangible that world seemed to me: the pink house, Lily, the calendar sisters, the Daughters of Mary, the Black Madonna, the bee yard, the honey house. I wondered if I would ever be able to create another fictional world that seemed as vivid to me. Then came The Mermaid Chair - Egret Island, Jessie, the island women, the monks, the mystical chair, a powerful Mermaid-Saint who presides over the blurring line between the spiritual and sensual- and every bit of it became as potent and real to me as the world of the bees had done. I have loved this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson since I discovered it back in college: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” Frankly it has seemed to me that change, inside and out, comes most often from what lies within us- including the thick, magical soup of the imagination, which is always at play, dreaming up new worlds, proposing new formulations of living and relating, visioning things larger than our hearts can bear and inviting us to expand ourselves to contain them. Next April when The Mermaid Chair arrives, my deepest wish is that you will be able to see the egrets lift out of the marsh grass with their white feathers carrying the sunlight, to smell the salt-laden air on Bone Yard Beach and practically feel the ebb and flow of tide in your body. I want you to experience the particular magic of sitting in the mermaid chair, of giving over to the Mermaid-Saint, and exploring along with Jessie deep and hidden places in the feminine soul. Now and then in this newsletter, I'll be sending you small glimpses of the world inside The Mermaid Chair, hoping you'll find it as patently “real” as I did, but more importantly, that you'll be inspired to look at “what lies within.” It's no tiny matter. Sue Monk Kidd Below is our August discussion question and some of the observations we've recieved from readers. Log in and share your thoughts with the group. Who is the queen bee in this story? Send your own reply to our discussion forum. From mweeks: Tough question. The Queen Bee keeps the hive functional and from having all of the workers eventually dying off. But if the queen dies and is replaced by a new Queen amazing things happen to the hive. If Lily’s life represents the hive, then she has had multiple Queen Bees, starting with Deborah, followed by Rosaleen, and then August followed by Mary, the mother of all mothers. The faith in Mary as well as the other Queens in her life, allows Lily to recognize her own mother strength that she displays with an act of unconditional love by recognizing love for Deborah within T. Ray prior to his fit of rage. She calls him “Daddy” also an act of strength, self preservation and Love which results in breaking his fit of rage in which he almost kills her thinking that she is Deborah. So in the end Lily herself is her own Queen Bee preserving her hive. The queen bee in this story is Deborah, Lilys’mother. A hive without a queen dies. Once Deborah was killed, the “hive” of Lily, and T.Rey no longer flourished. -- alice From Lisa: On page 270 of the book, there is a description of a scene where the Daughters are spreading honey on Mary of Chains. The begin in all different directions and then move as one. Their hands do a dance similar to the 'dance' patterns bees make around the queen. Because of this description, I see Mary of Chains as the queen bee and everyone around her as her hive. There are many answers to this though.... I too see the role of the queen bee changing through out the book. At one time it is May, who takes all the world's worries on herself. At times it is August and other times Lily herself. From Janet Luise: The queen bee is the higher self or higher spiritual side of each us. . . . Lily represents the small self in each of us.... isolated, alone, not yet aware of how to tap into the divine power within each of us, not yet knowing that Mother is always at home, inside her heart. . . . August has it all together - knows who she is. Higher & lower self are united in her heart. From Kelly: The story captured many queen bees, depending on which character was showing evidence of personal strength. My first hunch was August, but at the end I grew to believe the Queen Bee is the soul and the power in each woman to define her world. And, the worker bees are the others who rally around her in community to make her life her own.		Read A Quiet Moment with Sue Monk Kidd         Take part in our August Discussion Forum         Join our Open Forum for real time conversations with other readers.         Was this newsletter forwarded to you? If you’d like to subscribe, click here.       Author photo courtesy of Ann Kidd Taylor Egret photos courtesy of Alex Beard This message is being sent by the Penguin Group (USA) Inc. to subscribers of Sue Monk Kidd’s newsletter. click here to Unsubscribe from list.