Product Description

A special Mother's Day boxed set of Rebecca Wells's two New York Times-bestselling novels of the Ya-Yas and the Walker Clan, including a new Note to the Reader.

Both Little Altars Everywhere and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, chronicling the touching, funny, beguiling Walker family of Thornton, Louisiana, have been phenomenal critical and popular hits. Little Altars Everywhere, the first book, began life as a small-press, word-of-mouth cult classic in 1992, went on to win the Western States Book Award, and was included in the anthology Five Hundred Great Books by Women (Penguin, 1994). It followed Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood onto the New York Times bestseller list in 1998. The 1996 sequel, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, sparked the creation of Ya-Ya clubs around the country, and inspired Terry McMillan (San Francisco Chronicle) to exclaim, "I read the first two pages and I said, 'I haven't heard a white woman talk like this in literature before.'"

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #488885 in Books
• Published on: 1999-03-25
• Format: Box set
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.64" h x 5.56" w x 8.28" l, 1.22 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 608 pages

From Amazon.com
Little Altars Everywhere first introduces readers to Siddalee Walker, her mother Viviane, and Viviane's unforgettable pals, the Ya-Yas--as wild a bunch of born-and-bred steel magnolias as you will ever run across in literature. Set in Louisiana and narrated by various members of the Walker family, Little Altars tells the tragicomic tale of Siddalee's magnificently dysfunctional clan. There is hard-drinking Viviane, who alternately adores her children and abuses them, and Daddy Big Shep, who is inarticulate, alcoholic, and can't quite say what he means and seldom means what he yells. Sidda's siblings are a mess, the family servants are badly treated, and though Rebecca Wells includes many hilarious set pieces throughout, even the Ya-Yas can't completely overcome the dark core at the center of this novel.

Wells continues the saga of Sidda and Vivi Walker in her follow-up, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, and this time the mood is considerably lightened as she takes her characters back in time via a collection of letters, clippings, and scrapbooks--the "divine secrets" of the title. Here a younger, more sympathetic Vivi shares the limelight with her Ya-Ya pals, Teensy, Caro, and Necie. From skinny-dipping in the town water tower to boozing it up at the spring cotillion, these Southern-fried hell-raisers prove what everyone has always suspected--that "it's so much fun being a bad girl!" But you don't have to be bad to enjoy Rebecca Wells's take on family, friendship, and the ties that bind for a lifetime. --Margaret Prior

Andrew Ward, NPR commentator and author of Out Here: A Newcomer's Notes from the Great Northwest

"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."

Pat Conroy, author of Beach Music and The Prince of Tides

"What an exciting new voice, and what a splendid first novel. Just wonderful!"