FREE: Little Altars Everywhere by Rebecca Wells

The listing, Little Altars Everywhere by Rebecca Wells has ended.

used, but in good condition. paperback.

Little Altars Everywhere is the bittersweet story of the Walker clan of Thornton, Louisiana. Vivi Abbot Walker, the mother, is the eye of the hurricane. Her husband, Shep, is a cotton planter, and there four children: Siddalee, Little Shep, Baylor, and Lulu.

Each member of this funny, charming, and wounded family describes the view from his or her perch on the family tree. The book opens in 1963 with the recollections of Siddalee as a young girl, and continues with entries from her siblings, parents, and the black "help".

Slowly, story by story, we come to understand that underneath the charm and devil-may-care attitude of Vivi Abbot Walker, is a woman who, while she has her charms and good points, is also a monster of sorts, a woman who resents her captivity as a mother and so resents the children who hold her captive. In her resentment she is, unknowingly, destroying the happiness of her family and her children. She can't see that, for she is too consumed with her own desires and her own lack of happiness.

By the novel's end, we come to understand better the true sadness behind Siddalee's wish made in the first chapter. "I'm crying and I'm laughing and I still want my mother to come to me and take me in her arms." Little Altars Everywhere is a poignant, humorous, sad, heart-warming, heart-breaking novel.