Publisher, Harper Audio (1998)

“What an exciting new voice, and what a splendid first novel. Just wonderful!” --Pat Conroy

“Rebecca Wells brilliantly and adeptly moves among the voices, lending depth, honesty, and reality to the characters. With an intimate, intuitive sense of comedy, she exposes her characters' crazy, hilarious attempts at keeping reality at arm's length.” --Bloomsbury Review

Little Altars Everywhere is the New York Times bestselling companion to Rebecca Wells' celebrated novel Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. The story unfolds in the alternating voices of Vivi and her husband, Big Shep, along with Sidda and her siblings, as well as the almost-but-not-quite family Chaney and Willetta. Wells embraces nearly thirty years of life on the Walker plantation in Thornton, Louisiana, where the cloying air of the bayou and a web of family secrets at once shelters, traps, and defines this utterly original community of souls.

Who can resist the rich cadences of Sidda Walker and her flamboyant, secretive mother Vivi? Here, the young 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, and Baylor's memories of Vivi and her friends, the Ya-Yas.

Little Altars Everywhere is an insightful, piercing, and unflinching evocation of childhood, a loving tribute to the transforming power of faith, and a thoroughly fresh chronicle of a family which is as haunted as it is blessed.