She abuses her four children in every way imaginable: even sexual abuse is alluded to and physical and emotional abuse are the common threads that bind the individual stories together.ĭespite the necessary darkness that these threads engender, Little Altars Everywhere is an absolute delight. In Little Altars, Siddalee's mother, Vivi Abbott makes Mommy Dearest's Joan Crawford look like June Cleaver. Little Altars Everywhere is by turns poetic, dark, sharply funny and deeply moving. Written in the first person and told by eight different voices, Little Altars Everywhere focuses on the coming-of-age of a rural Louisiana girl, Siddalee Walker, under the shadow of an alcoholic and sharply abusive mother. Wells' voice and mission seem absolutely clear. Little Altars Everywhere is, in many ways, a nearly perfect book. Reading both Ya-Ya books - Little Altars Everywhere and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood back-to-back gives absolute credence to this scenario. At least until that book either falls into the hands of an editor at a big house with an eye and passion, or until the author produces something with more marketing legs than that first manuscript of perfect prose had to offer.

In fact, even as you read this, a small publisher somewhere in the world is getting ready to launch a truly exceptional book that almost no one on the planet will notice. Every year small and medium-sized presses produce some wonderful books that fall on mostly deaf ears. Nor is the publishing history of Little Altars Everywhere an isolated occurrence. In fact, as is often the case with the reasonably wonderful annual offerings of literary presses everywhere, the world at large didn't pay much attention at all.

Rebecca Wells' first novel, Little Altars Everywhere, is these days often referred to as 'a sleeper bestseller,' which simply means that when it was published by Washington state's Broken Moon Press in 1992, the publishing world did not stand and applaud.

Ya ya sisterhood books in order