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"Prologue
Siddalee 1991
In my dream, I'm five years old again and it’s a summer night at our
camp in Spring Creek. Mama and all us kids--me, Little Shep, Baylor,
and Lulu--around a bonfire. Mama's gang of girlfriends, the
Ya-Yas, and all their kids are there too. Mama goes inside and
puts Little Richard on the record player, She cranks the music up
so loud it bounces off the pine trees. Then she comes back, takes
my hand and says, Alright now, Siddalee: Dance!
Oooh, My Soul! Little Richard begins, shouting out a warning for the weak of heart.
Baby baby baby, don’t you know my love is true?!
Ooooo!
Honey honey honey honey, get up offa that money!
That man sings nasty. Those horns blow nasty. My body takes
over and I’m moving. I shake so hard that freckles jump off my
face.
Love Love Love Love Love
Oooooh! My soul!
Arms and legs have new lives all their own.
Every single part of me dances. And that 45-rpm record plays over
and over and over and we’re singing with Little Richard now, we’re
blowing saxophones! And if Daddy drives up in his pickup, you
know he’d yell at us, white women dancing like that, you know he
would! But Daddy doesn’t drive up, and me and Mama go on dancing
and all the Ya-Yas and the rest of the kids are yelling and clapping
for us! Oh, they yell and clap and hoot and holler! And
something secret, something sweet, something strong is shooting up from
the earth straight into my body, making my limbs quiver, making me
crazy-dance all over the place right there in my orange and white
sunsuit.
When I wake up from my dream, I’m laughing and my
face is streaked with tears. My body feels relaxed, loose,
good. I roll over in bed and I’m 33 years older than in my dream
and I still want to hold Mama's hands. I’m crying and I’m
laughing and I still want my mother to come and take me in her arms."
-- from Little Altars Everywhere
Little Altars Everywhere is a national best-seller, 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.
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
never fully comprehend -- Little Altars embraces nearly thirty
years of life on the plantation in Thorton, Louisiana, where the
cloying air of the bayou and a web of family secrets at once shelter,
trap and define an utterly original community of souls.
Who can resist such 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 on a 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
sorrow and 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 Walkers' charming life uncoils to convey their
heart-breaking confusion are oat once unsettling and familiar. Wells
creates an unforgettable portrait of the eccentric cast of characters
and exposes their poignant 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 thoroughly
fresh chronicle of a family that is as haunted as it is blessed.
Critical Praise:
"What an exciting new voice, and what a splendid first novel. Just wonderful!" -- Pat Conroy
"Wells presents an astonishing family of
voices, potent in its pain, dazzlingly brilliant in its stretches and
perceptions. This hilariously sad immersion into the Walker family of
Thornton, Louisiana, will leave few readers unchanged." -- Western
States Book Award Citation Jurors
"Some writers have all
the luck. Not only did Rebecca Wells get to be Catholic, she also got
to come from Louisiana. This means that half of her is conversant with
the Mystery, and the other half is crazy. Out of this chemistry she has
written a brilliant, pungent, and hilarious novel about the Walker clan
of Thornton, Louisiana . . . I’d like you to meet Miss Siddalee Walker,
a force of nature and a tool of fate, and one of the sharpest-eyed
little chatterboxes since Huckleberry Finn. Little Altars Everywhere
teems with wonderful characters. . . . But it’s Wells’ tireless and
ruthless evocation of childhood combined with an unfailingly shrewd
comic ear that makes Little Altars Everywhere such a thoroughly joyful and welcome noise." -- Andrew Ward, NPR commentator and author of Out Here: A Newcomer's Notes from the Great Northwest
"Rebecca
Wells' long-awaited first novel is a brilliant piece of work . . . a
structural tour de force . . . a classic Southern tale of dysfunctional
and marginal madness. The author's gift for giving life to so many
voices leaves the reader profoundly moved." -- Seattle Weekly
