If you are interested in reading Rebecca Wells’s The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder you might enjoy these readlikes:
Morning Sky by Judith McCoy-Miller
Nothing will ever be the same after boisterous Aunt Lilly Verdue arrives in the new settlement of Nicodemus, Kansas, in the early summer of 1880. Her brother-in-law is not at all happy to see her, and her unwillingness to admit the reason behind her hasty exit from New Orleans only fuels the fire. She’s not content to peacefully join the little farming community. No, Lilly manages to shake things up even further when she decides Moses Wyman is engaged to the wrong sister!
How to Be Lost by Amanda Eyre-Ward
Ward’s story bounces between New Orleans and New York, taking her protagonist, Caroline, into steely encounters with her somewhat-estranged family, especially her older sister and mother, as they continue, many years after the fact, to deal with the wrenching effects of the unresolved disappearance of Ellie, the youngest of the Winters family.
Mermaids in the Basement by Michael Lee West
Heading south to Honora’s home on the Gulf Coast, Renata is determined to stop feeling like a wilted gardenia and emerge as the unstoppable kudzu her beloved grandmother proudly proclaimed she would be. But for that to happen Renata’s got to face some not-so-genteel ghosts from her past, discover the truth about the mother she desperately misses, and make peace with the first man who abandoned her and broke her heart: her handsome and distant father.
The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman
The Story Sisters charts the lives of three sisters: Elv, Claire, and Meg. Each has a fate she must meet alone: one on a country road, one in the streets of Paris, and one in the corridors of her own imagination. Inhabiting their worlds are a charismatic man who cannot tell the truth, a neighbor who is not who he appears to be, a clumsy boy in Paris who falls in love and stays there, a detective who finds his heart’s desire, and a demon who will not let go.
The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood
Mary Baxter, living in Hood’s own Providence, R.I., loses her five-year-old daughter to meningitis. Mary and her husband, Dylan, struggle to preserve their marriage, but the memories are too painful, and the healing too difficult. Mary can’t focus on her job as a writer for a local newspaper, and she bitterly resents her emotionally and geographically distant mother, who relocated to Mexico years earlier. Still, it’s at her mother’s urging that Mary joins a knitting circle and discovers that knitting soothes without distracting.
In the Hope of Rising Again by Helen Scully
From the early days of the twentieth century through the Great Depression and beyond, Regina Riant Morrow’s life has been a series of triumphs and setbacks. Like that other great southern heroine, Scarlett O’Hara, Regina also endures great losses–her father, her first love, her first child, her husband, her family fortune–but somehow manages to carry on, guided by the wisdom of her servant, Camilla.
Fans of Rebecca Wells might also like: Amy Tan, Fannie Flagg