My Sweet Vidalia

On July 4, 1955, in rural Georgia, an act of violence threatens the life of Vidalia Lee Kandal’s pre-born daughter. Despite the direst of circumstances, the spirit of Vidalia’s lost child refuses to leave her ill-equipped young mother’s side.

For as long as she is needed—through additional troublesome pregnancies, through poverty, spousal abuse, and agonizing betrayals—Cieli Mae, the determined spirit child, narrates their journey. Serving as a safe place and sounding board for Vidalia’s innermost thoughts and confusions, lending a strength to her momma’s emerging voice, Cieli Mae provides her own brand of comfort and encouragement, all the while honoring the restrictions imposed by her own otherworldly status.

Vidalia finds further support in such unlikely relations and townsfolk as Doc Feldman, Gamma Gert and her Wild Women of God, and most particularly in Misses Ruby Pearl Banks, the wise, kind, and courageous church lady, who has suffered her own share of heartache in their small Southern town of yesteryear’s prejudices and presumptions.

My Sweet Vidalia is wise and witty, outstanding for its use of vibrant, poetic language and understated Southern dialect, as well as Mantella’s clear-eyed observations of “race relations” as “human relations," a cast of unforgettable characters, an in-depth exploration of the ties that bind, and its creative perspective. My Sweet Vidalia is a rare, wonderful, and complex look at hope, strength, the unparalleled power of unconditional love, and a young mother’s refusal to give up.