Sue Monk Kidd

Sue Monk Kidd is an American novelist and memoirist raised in Sylvester, Georgia. She earned a nursing degree from Texas Christian University in 1970 and worked as a nurse before building a writing career. Her early nonfiction grew from contemplative spirituality and feminist theology; she later turned to fiction.

Across both forms, Kidd repeatedly examines women’s inner lives, spiritual authority and the struggle to speak within restrictive cultures. The Secret Life of Bees places a girl’s search for her mother in South Carolina during the civil-rights era. The Invention of Wings draws on the lives of abolitionist sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké, while The Book of Longings imagines Ana, a first-century woman devoted to writing who becomes the wife of Jesus.

The Secret Life of Bees became a long-running bestseller and was adapted as a feature film and a stage musical. The Mermaid Chair was adapted for television. The Invention of Wings was selected for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0, and The Book of Longings became a New York Times and number-one IndieBound bestseller.

Start with The Book of Longings. Its invented central figure gives Kidd room to join historical detail with her abiding concerns: silenced women, religious tradition and the cost of claiming a creative life. Readers drawn to its Southern settings and questions of race may continue with The Secret Life of Bees or The Invention of Wings.