Little Altars Everywhere
by Rebecca Wells
List Price: $13.00
Pages: 125
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0060976845
Publisher: HarperCollins
I feel a hairline fracture of pain in my heart. And I feel it: the sweet pure
longing of each of us, still intact. My family stands in a circle around me. All
the innocence, the old woundings. It grows so quiet. I feel my godchild's
breathing against my chest, but it is also the breathing of parched babies in
drought-stricken lands. I feel each member of my family's breath dropping in
and out, until it seems like we are all part of one giant bellows. And all the
suffering spirals down into one shaft of sunlight which shines though one
stained glass window in Thornton, Louisiana. This is what I come home to.
I do not have to crawl across the desert on my knees. I do not have to swim
through turbulent oceans to stop the drownings. All I have to do is watch and
pray, and love them. Not save them, not hurt them, just love them.
Little Altars Everywhere, the first novel by Rebecca Wells, 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 the two of them have four children: Siddalee, Little Shep, Baylor, and
Lulu, who is named for Tallulah Bankhead, one of her mother's patron
saints.
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" who cannot save the
Walker's from their darkness.
Twenty-seven years later, Wells returns to the Walkers, and this time the
stories are startlingly different. The previous stories weren't necessarily lies,
but they weren't the whole truth. It becomes clear that ultimately, there is no
one truth within a family; there are only each character's tiny pin-light of truth.
Little Altars Everywhere is finally about the tiny murders that occur within a
loving but lost Catholic Louisiana family. It offers no miracles of redemption;
instead it suggests the power of an open heart to offer protection to the
innocent.
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1. Wells uses multiple narrators to unfold the story in Little Altars Everywhere. What advantages are gained by this? Does this multiple perspective mean that we sense the story from a broader perspective from that of any one character? And what, if any value, is that broader perspective when evaluating the moral behavior of a character? Does the use of multiple narrators point to a truth that is too big, too uncertain, and too complex for any one character or person to put all together into a cogent vision? Do multiple narrators soften our judgments about a character?
2. What attitude does the novel take toward institutional religion (i.e., denominations), spirituality (a belief in and need for God and meaning), and human suffering. Catholicism is a strong presence in the novel. How does Catholicism both bless and damage the Walker family?
3. Vivi imparts a complex legacy to her children. What are the ingredients of this legacy? Shame? Suffering? A sense of wonder? A capacity for rapture?
4. Wells has said that "humor is the healing art." Discuss this in light of this novel.
5. Wells opens the novel with references to Little Richard in the "Prologue" and to Aaron Neville in the concluding chapter? What significance might this have? What role does racism play in the story of the Walkers? How does the value system of Chaney and Willetta differ from that of Vivi and Shep?
6. At the end of the novel, Sidda has a moment of insight into both her life and the lives of her family when she suddenly realizes that, "All their longing was pure." What does Sidda mean by this expression?
7. How can the acceptance of suffering help transform that suffering into love?
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"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. Frankie Adams and Scout Finch, 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's tireless invention 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, author of Out Here: A Newcomer's Notes From the Great Northwest and NPR commentator
