Starring Queen Latifah, Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys, Sophie Okonedo, and Paul Bettany, the film was written and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, and produced by Lauren Shuler Donner and Will Smith, with Jada Pinkett Smith as the executive producer.

In the present day, Lily's 14th birthday is approaching, and she celebrates the signing of the Civil Rights Act with her father’s black hired help, Rosaleen.

She is caught hastily buttoning her shirt by T. Ray, who assumes she was out there with a boy and punishes her by having her kneel on a pile of grits for an hour.

T. Ray retrieves Lily and takes her back home, but she runs away and breaks Rosaleen out of the hospital, where she’s being treated for her wounds while she awaits jail.

It takes two days for Lily and Rosaleen to reach Tiburon and find their way to the home of August Boatwright and her sisters May and June.

Despite the unlikeliness of Lily's lies about hers and Rosaleen’s circumstances, and June’s suspicions, August takes them in, agreeing to trade room and board for their labor.

Lily becomes an apprentice beekeeper and later discovers May's “wailing wall”, tucked full of little notes about events that have distressed the brittle and sensitive May, as well as her twin sister April, who died in childhood.

She also learns about August’s leadership of a small group of women who pray to the life-size statue of a Black Madonna in the Boatwright’s living room for guidance.

In time Lily grows close to Zach, the teenage son of one member in the prayer group and August's assistant beekeeper/godson.

May drowns herself out of grief to escape the pain of feeling the world's hatred, but predicts in her suicide note that Zach will be returned alive.