What to make of Rebecca Wells’ latest novel, “The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder”? At times charming and engrossing, it nevertheless feels so emotionally manipulative that it leaves the reader feeling betrayed.
Centering on Calla Lily Ponder, who narrates the tale, Wells follows her heroine through three decades of life in Louisiana, beginning in the early 1950s. Calla Lily lives in a small town, La Luna, and is blessed with parents who are loved and respected by all the townsfolk. Her mother, whom Calla Lily calls M’Dear, is a hairdresser, who has a magic touch, or “healing hands,” a gift she passes on to her daughter.
When she is 9 years old, a new boy, Tuck, comes to town. Calla Lily and Tuck take an instant dislike to each other, so it is of course only natural that as they become teenagers, they fall in love.
During their budding teenage relationship, Calla Lily learns more about Tuck’s past and the darkness in his life that sent him to live with his grandparents in La Luna.
When Tuck’s parents return to try to reclaim him, it sets in motion a chain of events that, combined with a traumatic event in Calla Lily’s life, tears the young lovers apart, sending Tuck off to college at Stanford and Calla to New Orleans to attend the top beauty school in the South.
Wells is at her best when writing about Louisiana and New Orleans. Her descriptions are so lush and lyrical it feels like you could step through the pages into the hot, humid landscape so shaped by the Mississippi River.
Because this is the South in the 1960s, some hints of racial violence and prejudice affect Calla Lily’s life, but they seem to be removed from her everyday experiences, as well as those of most of her neighbors.
While it doesn’t negate the horror when the violence erupts, in this case at the hands of a racist police officer, it doesn’t seem to be something that most people in a small town think about much. They just accept it while trying to minimize the damage.
This makes it all the more jarring to read, “I’m sure I’m not the only person to notice that the most segregated hours of the week are Sunday mornings, when black and white worshipers head off to different churches.”
At a funeral, the black people who attend sit in the back of the church. This racism doesn’t seem malignant, but that reinforces its potency.
The novel unfolds at a seemingly languorous pace, as Calla Lily undergoes further transformative experiences in New Orleans, including the descent of Sukey, her best friend from La Luna, into addiction. She also rediscovers love with a man named Sweet Chalon.
Sweet is the cousin of Ricky, her former instructor at the beauty school who hires her for his shop after she finishes school. Ricky, too, understands “healing hands,” and his healing hands help Calla Lily start the process that leads to her meeting with Sweet.
Even while all this is going on, you know that a meeting with Tuck is on the horizon. The circumstances that lead to it are very predictable. When it finally happens, instead of providing an opportunity for character growth and a new realization of the self and maturation, Wells blatantly cribs from a major Hollywood blockbuster. This removes the responsibility for their separation from either character with a deus ex machina that robs the novel of any emotional potency.
It’s really too bad, because until that point, Wells’ latest is quite engrossing and a lovely read.
Candace Horgan is a freelance writer in Denver.
FICTION
The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder
by Rebecca Wells
$25.95
