Works by
Sue Monk Kidd
(Writer)
[August 12, 1948 - ]

Fiction

• The Mermaid Chair (2005)
  Inside the abbey of a Benedictine monastery on Egret Island, just off the coast of South Carolina, resides a beautiful and mysterious chair ornately carved with mermaids and dedicated to a saint, who, legend claims, was a mermaid before her conversion.
  
  When Jessie is summoned home to the island to cope with her eccentric mother’s seemingly inexplicable act of violence, she is living a conventional life with her husband, Hugh, a life “molded to the smallest space possible.” Jessie loves Hugh, but once on the island, she finds herself drawn to Brother Thomas, a monk who is soon to take his final vows.
  
  Amid a rich community of unforgettable island women and the exotic beauty of marshlands, tidal creeks and majestic egrets, Jessie grapples with the tension of desire and the struggle to deny it, with a freedom that feels overwhelmingly right and the immutable force of home and marriage. Is the power of the mermaid chair only a myth? Or will it alter the course of Jessie’s life? What transpires will unlock the roots of her mother’s tormented past, but most of all, allow Jessie to make a marriage unto herself.
  
  Where does the yearning for soul-mated love come from? When it comes to love, what are the pulls inside a woman between the ordinary and the sublime? The Mermaid Chair is a vividly imagined novel about mermaids and saints, about the passions of the spirit and the ecstasies of the body, brilliantly illuminating the awakening of a woman to her own deepest self.

• The Secret Life of Bees (2002)
  Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her harsh, unyielding father, Lily Owens has shaped her entire life around one devastating, blurred memory--the afternoon her mother was killed, when Lily was four. Since then, her only real companion has been the fierce-hearted, and sometimes just fierce, black woman Rosaleen, who acts as her "stand-in mother."
  
  When Rosaleen insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily knows it's time to spring them both free. They take off in the only direction Lily can think of, toward a town called Tiburon, South Carolina--a name she found on the back of a picture amid the few possessions left by her mother.
  
  There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters named May, June, and August. Lily thinks of them as the calendar sisters and enters their mesmerizing secret world of bees and honey, and of the Black Madonna who presides over this household of strong, wise women. Maternal loss and betrayal, guilt and forgiveness entwine in a story that leads Lily to the single thing her heart longs for most.
  
  The Secret Life of Bees has a rare wisdom about life--about mothers and daughters and the women in our lives who become our true mothers. A remarkable story about the divine power of women and the transforming power of love, this is a stunning debut whose rich, assured, irresistible voice gathers us up and doesn't let go, not for a moment. It is the kind of novel that women share with each other and that mothers will hand down to their daughters for years to come.

Non-fiction

• Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story (September 8, 2009) with Ann Kidd Tayor
  In this wise and intimate dual memoir, Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor, chronicle their travels together, and offer their distinct perspectives as a fifty-something and a twenty-something, each on a quest to redefine herself, and rediscover each other.
  
  Between 1998 and 2000, Sue and Ann travel together to sacred sites throughout Greece and France. Sue, newly aware of aging, caught in a creative vacuum, longing to reconnect with her now grown daughter, struggles to find the wherewithal to enlarge a vision of swarming bees into a novel. Ann, just graduated from college, heartbroken and benumbed by the classic question about what to do with her life, grapples with a painful depression. The intimacy of travel and the wondrous nature of the places Sue and Ann visit bring forth each woman’s internal struggle and provide fertile terrain for reflection and inspiration. In voices candid and lyrical, this modern-day Demeter and Persephone explore the richly symbolic and personal meaning of an array of inspiring figures and sacred sites in Athens and Eleusis, Paris and Rocamador, and places in between. They also give voice to a moving transformation of that most protean of human connections: the bond of mothers and daughters.
  
  A poignant and compelling book about feminine thresholds, spiritual growth, and the relationship between mothers and daughters, Traveling with Pomegranates is both a revealing self-portrait by a beloved author and her daughter, a strong new voice, and a momentous story that will resonate with women everywhere.

• Firstlight: The Early Inspirational Writings of Sue Monk Kidd (2006)
  This beautiful and evocative collection offers readers an intimate glimpse into the early years of Sue Monk Kidd’s journey as both writer and spiritual seeker. The book is compiled from a wide range of inspirational and spiritual writings published over a dozen years in Guideposts magazine, Weavings, and other publications.
  
  Organized around thirteen motifs, such as Awareness, Simplicity of Spirit, Compassion, Severe Grace and Letting Go, the book is interwoven with thoughtful essays on the spiritual life, reflections on a stream of ordinary, sacred moments, and compelling, personal stories about the author’s quest for meaning, her years as a young mother and a nurse, her marriage, travels and childhood.
  
  In every life there are moments of “first light,” when one’s heart begins to open and new awareness dawns. Firstlight draws readers to embrace their own moments of awakening and renews the mystery of being alive in a vividly sacred world.

• The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine (1996)
  For years, award-winning author Sue Monk Kidd was a conventionally religious woman. Then, in the late 1980s, Kidd experienced an unexpected awakening, and began a journey toward a feminine spirituality.
  
  With the exceptional storytelling skills that have helped make her name, the acclaimed author of When the Heart Waits tells her very personal story of the fear, anger, healing, and freedom she experienced on the path toward the wholeness that women have lost within patriarchal faith traditions. From a jarring encounter with sexism in a suburban drugstore, to monastery retreats and to rituals in the caves of Crete, she reveals a new level of feminine spiritual consciousness for all women— one that retains a meaningful connection with the “deep song of Christianity,” embraces the sacredness of ordinary women’s experience, and has the power to transform in the most positive ways every fundamental relationship in a woman’s life— her marriage, her career, and her religion.

• When the Heart Waits: Leader's Guide (1991)

• Love's Hidden Blessings: God Can Touch Your Life When You Least Expect It (1990)

• When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions (1990, 2006)
  Blending her own experiences with an intimate grasp of contemplative spirituality, Sue Monk Kidd relates the passionate and moving tale of her spiritual crisis at midlife, when life seemed to have lost meaning and how her longing for hasty escape from the pain yielded to a discipline of “active waiting.” Comparing her experience to the formative processes inside a chrysalis on a wintry tree branch, Kidd reflects on the fact that the soul is often symbolized as a butterfly. The simple cocoon, a living parable of waiting, becomes an icon of hope for the transformation that the author sought. Kidd charts her re-ascent from the depths and offers a new understanding of the passage away from the false self, which is based upon others’ expectations, to the true self of God’s unfolding intention. Her wise, inspiring book helps those in doubt and crisis recognize the opportunity to “dismantle old masks and patterns and unfold a deeper, more authentic self.” When the Heart Waits, which first appeared in hardcover in 1990, has been embraced by thousands of spiritual seekers from many backgrounds and has become an enduring classic in Christian spirituality.  See also When the Heart Waits: Leader's Guide (1991).

• God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved (1989)
  One of today's most promising new Christian writers explores the thrilling possibilities of God's everlasting love.

• All Things Are Possible (1988)

See also:

• Biography - Sue Monk Kidd (2007)
  An article from: Contemporary Authors Online by Gale Reference Team, Digital - HTML