The latest book by novelist Sue Monk Kidd gives her fans a window into the creation of her popular best seller, “The Secret Life of Bees”, and into the deepening relationship with her daughter, who helped write the memoir.
“Traveling With Pomegranates” features Kidd and first-time author Ann Kidd Taylor alternating chapters as they tell of loss and discovery, myth and the relationship between mothers and daughters. The book, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), came out Tuesday.
Subtitled “A Mother-Daughter Story,” Kidd tells of a woman dealing with the changes and loss of turning 50 — a woman with a deep desire to become a novelist and who incubates a story about a white Southern girl who runs away to live with three black beekeepers.
Taylor writes of finding her place after graduating from college and suffering the breakup of a long-term relationship. The writers set their memoir against the backdrop of travels to France, Greece and Turkey between 1998 and 2000 in what becomes a journey of discovery.
“It’s a story of coming into age of a young woman, but it’s also my story of crossing over into being an older woman,” Kidd says. “They are so different but in a lot of ways they are the same because you’re having to deal with feelings of loss.”