Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Published in 1996 by HarperCollins, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells is a loud, warm, sad and funny family novel set mostly in Louisiana, with trips to Seattle and New York. It moves back and forth across sixty years. At its center is a fight between a mother and a daughter that feels painfully real. Around that fight is a circle of four old friends who have loved each other since girlhood. I read it on a hot weekend, which felt right, because Louisiana heat sits over almost every page.

Siddalee Walker, called Sidda, is a successful theater director living in Seattle. She gives an interview to The New York Times about her work and talks in a raw way about her Louisiana childhood. She calls her mother Vivi a tap-dancing child abuser. The line runs in print. Vivi reads it in Thornton, Louisiana. Both women feel hurt and betrayed. They stop speaking. Sidda puts off her wedding. Vivi rages and drinks. Then the other Ya-Yas step in and mail Sidda a large scrapbook full of clippings, photos, letters and notes that tell Vivi's life story from the 1930s to the present. Sidda reads it in Seattle while Vivi waits in Louisiana. Slowly they move toward mother daughter reconciliation.

The book jumps in time and piles on scenes, Catholic guilt and Mardi Gras, lake houses and dance recitals, fistfights and funerals. Some readers will find that too much. I found the mess fits the point. Memory is messy. Four women telling one story together will never tell it straight. Wells lets them talk over each other, and the result feels like sitting on a porch while older women tell tales that wander and then land hard.

Sidda Walker the Theater Director in Seattle

Siddalee Walker, always called Sidda, is forty in the present-day thread. She left Thornton, Louisiana years ago and built a life in Seattle as a theater director. She knows how to shape a scene and pace a story so an audience stays with it through pain. That skill matters because she has shaped the story of her childhood into something she can live with, and the New York Times interview cracks that shape open.

Sidda grew up as the only daughter in a house with three brothers and a mother who could be dazzling one hour and frightening the next. She remembers parties that turned, punishments that went too far, and love too, big hugs, songs in the car, Vivi in a good mood lighting up a room. As a director she looks for motive. As a daughter she has mostly wanted distance. Seattle gives her distance. Thornton still pulls at her.

Her fiance is Connor McGill. Connor is steady and kind and a little out of his depth with Walker family drama. He loves Sidda and wants to marry her, but he sees that she stalls on setting a date and that every call from Louisiana shakes her for days. He does not push her to forgive fast. He does push her to be honest. Their talks in Seattle anchor the present. He asks plain questions. She gives tangled answers. He cooks and listens and gets angry when she shuts him out. He also says he cannot marry a woman who will not face her mother, and that forces Sidda to open the scrapbook box on her table.

Sidda is prickly and funny and tired. She talks to her therapist and to theater friends and to Connor late at night. She rewrites her wedding vows and throws them away. She is not a saint and can be cruel on the phone in the way tired adult children can be cruel. Still, she tries to see clearly, and that kept me on her side. Wells gives her a sharp eye for small detail, the way Vivi buttered toast, the way Shep Walker laughed, the way Louisiana heat felt on her skin as a girl compared with thin Seattle rain.

Vivi Walker and the Tap-Dancing Child Abuser Fight

Viviane Joan Abbott Walker, called Vivi, is Sidda's mother, and she is a force. In Thornton she is known for beauty, pep, temper, charm and trouble. She married Shep Walker, raised four children, kept house through good years and bad, drank too much at times, hit her children at times, and loved them with a wild showy love they never doubted even when they feared her. Wells does not excuse the hitting. She shows it through Sidda's memories and through Vivi's later shame. She also shows how Vivi learned to cope by performing, dancing, joking and throwing a party when crying felt too risky.

The opening fight starts with the New York Times piece. Sidda tells a reporter her mother was a tap-dancing child abuser. She means it as a raw summary. Vivi could tap dance beautifully and could also lose control and hurt her children. In print, stripped of tone, it reads as a flat charge. Vivi feels exposed in front of the whole town. Friends call. The store goes quiet when she walks in. For Vivi, who worked hard to be a proper Thornton lady after a wild youth, the shame cuts deep.

Vivi answers with an angry letter. She says she is cut off and tells Sidda not to come home. She says she raised four children with love and will not be reduced to one label. Sidda writes back just as angry, listing bruises and nights locked out and days walking on eggshells. Shep tries to mediate by phone and fails. Connor tries to calm Sidda and fails. The Ya-Yas, Vivi's three oldest friends, watch Vivi spiral and decide to act. They love Vivi but they also see Sidda's pain. They know Vivi's full story in a way Sidda never has, and they decide Sidda cannot judge her mother fairly until she knows it.

Wells refuses to make the fight about one article. The article is only the spark. The fuel is decades old. Vivi feels she gave her life to her children and got mockery in return. Sidda feels she survived and got denial in return. Both feel unseen. Wells lets their letters sound ugly and loving at once, which felt true to real family fights.

The Ya-Yas in Thornton Louisiana in the 1930s

The heart of the book belongs to four girls in Thornton, Louisiana in the 1930s who crown themselves the Ya-Yas. Vivi Abbott is the ringleader, bold and bright and hungry for praise. Teensy Whitman is small and sweet and loyal. Caro Bennett is sharp tongued and funny, with the best lines and the hardest shell. Necie Kelleher is devout and kind, the peacemaker who prays for the others and keeps secrets. They invent rites, chants, costumes and rules. They sneak out and dance and swear blood sister loyalty by a lake and mean it for life.

Those pages glow with Louisiana heat and noise. Thornton in the 1930s is small and strict and Catholic, with priests and nuns, heat that shimmers over the road, cicadas loud enough to drown talk, sweet olive in the yards, lake water warm as bathwater by August. The girls ride bikes past cane fields, buy cold drinks at the drugstore, sit through Mass and then run to the woods to play their own secret rites. They trade movie magazines and practice dance steps on porches until their legs ache.

Their bond deepens because each girl carries trouble at home. Vivi loses her mother young and grows up starved for praise. Teensy learns to smooth things over to stay safe. Caro learns to joke before she can be mocked. Necie learns to pray and serve to earn love. The Ya-Yas become a second family where each girl can be big and silly and angry without shame. It sounds childish, and it is, but Wells shows how those games teach loyalty that lasts through war, marriage, births and deaths.

As teens during the war years they face dating, jealousy, church rules and family pressure. Vivi shines brightest and falls hardest. Teensy steadies her. Caro teases her back into humor. Necie covers for her when she slips. Their teen fights foreshadow their fights as old women, loud and tearful and over by supper. A fair criticism is that the sprawling timeline jumps fast. One chapter they are twelve, the next seventeen, the next mothers. You must watch the dates or you will get lost.

The Scrapbook Shep Walker and Connor McGill

The engine of the novel is the scrapbook the Ya-Yas send to Sidda. It is a box full of things saved over sixty years. There are clippings from Thornton dances, report cards, pressed flowers, photos with curled edges, Vivi in a tap costume, Vivi with Shep on a dock, Vivi pregnant and laughing, Sidda as a scowling baby, the four Ya-Yas in white gloves at church and in shorts at the lake. There are letters in different hands, Teensy's careful script, Caro's jokes in the margins, Necie's prayer cards, programs, recipes and funeral cards. There is a packet for Sidda alone that says read when you are calm, which made me laugh because no one here stays calm long.

Through the scrapbook Sidda learns facts she never knew. She learns how Vivi met Shep Walker and why the marriage held. She learns about early married years, money worries, deaths, losses and fears Vivi never spoke of at home. She learns about days Vivi tried hard to be a good Thornton mother and days drink and temper won. She learns about a summer tied to loss and guilt that helps explain, though not excuse, the worst years of her childhood. Wells mixes clippings with memory and photos with phone calls, so the past feels found rather than taught.

Sidda reads in small doses on her Seattle floor. She calls Connor over to look. She talks it through with her therapist. She gets angry at gaps and angry at the Ya-Yas for sending a defense brief instead of an apology. Then a plain kind letter from Teensy makes her cry, a funny note from Caro makes her laugh through tears, and a prayer from Necie steadies her. The box works the way real family archives work, not by proving a case but by piling up detail until a parent stops being a label and starts being a person. The device can feel too handy, with the right letter arriving at the right moment, but the voices feel distinct enough that I forgave it.

Shep Walker, Sidda's father and Vivi's husband, gives the book weight. Shep is a steady Louisiana man who loves Vivi and his children fiercely and often stands between them to keep the peace. He works hard, fishes, tells stories and comes home. He covers for Vivi when she slips and scolds her when she goes too far. When Vivi rages he stays. When Sidda flees to Seattle he calls and visits. When the Times fight blows up he begs both women to soften. His letters show a man who knew who he married and chose her daily. His talks with Sidda show a father who knows his daughter was hurt and aches that he did not stop more of it. He says he did his best and his best fell short, and that plain line does more for Sidda than any speech.

Connor mirrors Shep in a younger form. He loves theater and hiking and Sidda's mind, and he wants children and a calm home. The stalled wedding forces him to ask if he can live with holidays split by old fights and with Sidda shaking after calls from Vivi. He is patient, then fed up, then patient again. He leaves for a few days and then returns, and the return feels earned because Sidda meets him with new honesty. Sidda's brothers Baylor, Little Shep and Lulu stay at the edge but matter, because they show four children can grow up in one house and remember four different houses.

Louisiana Heat Reconciliation and Criticism

No summary works without Louisiana heat, because heat is like a character. Wells writes it as weight on skin, smell of cut grass and mud and gardenias, sound of fans and ice in glasses, cause of short tempers and long naps. Thornton summers press on windows. Lake water gives brief relief and leaves you sticky again. Kitchens fill with steam from greens and rice. Porches hold women shelling peas and fanning and telling stories. Seattle feels cool and gray and polite by contrast, with rain and quiet rooms where you hear your thoughts too loudly. Sidda fled heat for cool, noise for quiet, crowd for privacy. To heal she must let some heat back in.

Mother daughter reconciliation comes in steps, not one big scene. Sidda finishes the scrapbook and calls Vivi. They talk briefly and hang up. They trade letters. Sidda flies to Louisiana with Connor. Vivi cleans like a storm and pretends she did not. They hug awkwardly at the airport and fight over dinner about the article and cry. They walk by the lake with the Ya-Yas at a careful distance. They visit church. They cook and burn the rice and laugh. Slowly Sidda sees Vivi as a whole woman, a girl who lost her mother, a young wife who felt trapped, a mother who failed at times and showed up at times, an old woman who fears dying unpardoned. Vivi sees Sidda as a whole woman too, an artist with wounds and gifts who needs blessing more than correction.

Wells earns it by not wiping the past clean. Vivi says she is sorry in plain words, more than once, for clear harms. She names the hitting and the drinking and the times pride beat care. Sidda says she loves Vivi and also says she was hurt, and holds both. They agree they will still grate on each other. The Ya-Yas host a small rite to welcome Sidda back, with jokes and tears and too much food, and even that stays a little awkward, which I liked. Forgiveness is a practice here, not a finish line. Connor and Shep watch with tired smiles. The wedding can go forward, not because all is fixed but because Sidda knows her story and can tell it without spitting it as a headline.

Honest criticism is needed. First, melodrama runs high. People slap and faint and drink and pray loudly and dance on tables and shout secrets across yards. Vivi's highs and lows can feel staged, and scenes around illness and death push hard for tears. Readers who like spare prose may tire of pet names and chants. Second, the sprawling timeline can confuse, jumping from 1930s girlhood to 1960s motherhood to 1990s Seattle with thin bridges, while minor cousins blur. I flipped back to place who married whom. Third, the book warms Vivi a lot by the end, perhaps too fast. The scrapbook explains her, but explanation can slide toward excuse if you read fast. Seeing why a parent hurt you does not erase the hurt. Even so, I closed the book fond of these women. Vivi, Teensy, Caro and Necie irritate and judge and cover for each other and show up for sixty years. That daily choice to stay close is the true secret. For fans of big hearted Southern family novels about mothers and daughters, friendship, food, faith, music and second chances, this 1996 HarperCollins novel earns its long shelf life, flaws and all.