Little Altars Everywhere: Love, Loss, and Laughter in the Deep South?an Insightful and Piercing Southern Family Saga

By Rebecca Wells

Book Overview

"We are swinging high, flying way up, higher than in real life. And when I look down, I see all the ordinary stuff--our brick house, the porch, the tool shed, the clothesline, the chinaberry tree. But they are all lit up from inside so their everyday selves have holy sparks, they'd go and kneel in front of them and pray and just feel good. Somehow the whole world looks like little altars everywhere."

Little Altars Everywhere is a national bestseller, a companion to Rebecca Wells's celebrated novel Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Originally published in 1992, Little Altars introduces Sidda, Vivi, the rest of the spirited Walker Clan, and the indomitable Ya-Yas. It is now available for the first time in hardcover.

Told in alternating voices of Vivi and her husband, Big Shep, along with Sidda, her siblings Little Shep, Lulu, Baylor, and Cheney and Willetta--the black couple who impact the Walkers' lives in ways they may never fully comprehend--Little Altars embraces nearly thirty years of life on their plantation in Thorton, Louisiana, where the cloying air of the bayou and a web of family secrets of once shelter, trap, and define an utterly original community of souls.

Who can resist the rich cadences of Sidda Walker and her flamboyant, secretive mother, Vivi? Here, the young Sidda--a precocious reader and an eloquent observer of the fault lines that divide her family--leads us her mischievous adventures at Our Lady of Divine Compassion parochial school and beyond. A Catholic girl of pristine manners, devotion, and provocative ideas, Sidda is the very essence of childhood joy and sorrow.

In a series of luminous reminiscences, we also hear Little Shep's stories of his eccentric grandmother, Lulu's matter-of-fact account of her shoplifting skills, and Baylor's memories of Vivi and her friends, the Ya-Yas.

Beneath the humor and tight-knit bonds of family and friendship lie the undercurrents of alcoholism, abuse, and violence. The overlapping recollections of how the Walker's charming life uncoils to convey their heartbreaking confusion are at once unsettling and familiar. Wells creates an unforgettable portrait and funny attempts to keep reality at arm's length. Through our laughter, we feel their inevitable pain, with a glimmer of hope for forgiveness and healing.

An arresting combination of colloquialism, poetry, and grace, Little Altars Everywhere is an insightful, piercing, and unflinching evocation of childhood, a loving tribute to the transformative power of faith, and a thoroughly fresh chronicle of a family that is as haunted as it is blessed.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 006019362X
• ISBN13: 9780060193621
• Release Date: October 1998
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.8" x 6.1"

Customer Reviews

Wonderfully entertaining.

This book will make you laugh, cry and think

A five-star melancholy story

On Friday I stopped on the way home from work to buy "Little Altars Everywhere" by Rebecca Wells. It has been on my wish list for about a year now and I didn't even know it was related to the Ya-Ya Sisterhood until last week!Anyway like I said I got it on Friday afternoon and finished it by dinnertime on Saturday - it was THAT GOOD.Each chapter was told in a different characters' point of view. There were several by Sidda and a few from Vivi, but there was also some insight from Big Shep, Willetta, and Sidda's siblings Little Shep, Baylor and Lulu. This format provided better insight into the family's troubles than just Sidda's POV would have.The story overall is disturbing and sad - especially the chapters with Willetta and Little Shep. Plenty of happy memories are visited throughout the book but they are overshadowed by a dark cloud in every chapter, usually the result of something Vivi has done.Reading this book helped me to better understand its subsequent "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" and I would highly recommend it with FIVE STARS!

Excellent Writing...

Richer, darker and deeper than the second book or the movie, this book truly is a 'must' read if you want to understand the Walker family, especially the mystery who is Viviane Abbot Walker. Starting as a simple short story ("Looking for My Mules," with Shep, Viviane and an old man lost on their farm), Rebecca Wells' tales of growing up in Louisiana in a less than perfect home grew first into Little Altars Everywhere, then into the Divine Secrets book and movie. Each chapter contains a well crafted short story, told from the viewpoint of different characters. Each chapter offers a title with the name of the narrator and year they are talking in. In some cases, the titles are enough to draw you in (Catfish Dreams; E-Z Boy War; The Princess of Gimmee.)From the 60's to the 90's, each story offers a simple, but meaningful slice of the entire Walker family's story. Some are told in the present, some are memories of what happened long ago. The chapters weave together to give you a wider view of what was going on from different perspectives. As you read, you'll find yourself piecing together the story of Sidalee, her siblings, her mother Vivi and father Shep, as well as Willetta and Chaney, the black couple who were hired help, and who have an outside view of the family. Don't stop reading with this book, or you'll miss a view of the whole person -- doting mother, child abuser, unloved child, shattered schoolgirl, broken hearted, passionate lover, distant wife and mother as well as a view of Shep as a fallible human being and how he contributed to Vivi's 'condition' and the affect it had on their children. A treasure of a book, you may find it more unsettling than the movie or the second book. Excellent writing, it will leave you wanting to know more (unless you've already read the second book!)

Wonderful, dahlin

I read Divine Secrets a few months ago and absolutely loved it. It was one of the best books I've ever read. Little Altars Everywhere was a book I began with much anticipation and did not let me down. It amazes me how Wells makes the reader hate and love characters at the same time. This book gives more background on the children and is one of those books you devour in 2 or 3 days time. I finished the book feeling sad, feeling happy and feeling that my life may not be perfect, but it was blessed to not have a mother like Vivi. The Ya-Ya series are some of the best written literature I have ever read. I recommend it without reservation, to female readers aged 18-45.

Innocence offered up on the altar of madness

I wish that I had read this before its sequel, "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood." With the background on the life of Siddalee Walker and her siblings offered in this fecund tapestry of family dysfunction, I have a much better understanding of Sidda's "whining."This is a disturbing tale of a prominent family in small-town Louisiana and the hidden rot at its core. Viviane Abbott Walker is a self-centered, immature woman who would have done better to collect dolls than have living, breathing children to annihilate. The best answer the narcissistic Vivi can come up with to the everyday problems of life is to drown them in alcohol. Under its influence, she systematically physically abuses and emotionally batters her children, indelibly damaging them for life. Her weak husband's solution to the domestic battlefield is to flee to his hunting camp for days on end and drink himself into oblivion. This bittersweet novel was excruciatingly painful to read, but I wouldn't have missed it for the world.There were divinely funny moments interspersed with heartbreaking passages that make one so angry you forget that this is fiction. I suspect that many of us can identify with key issues of this profoundly touching novel. I know I did. This is one of those rare jewels whose lessons to live by can change your life.