All That Lives: A Novel of the Bell Witch

Drawn from the legend of the Bell Witch, a powerful novel of family, murder, and unspeakable evil follows the distinguished Bell family, rural farmers who lead a peaceful existence, as they, and their entire community, are plagued by violent and malevolent unseen forces, but an evil far greater than the Bell Witch lurks deep within the Bell home. A first novel. 40,000 first printing.

From Publishers Weekly

In this debut novel, Sanders-Self paints a sympathetic portrait of an innocent girl and a community of simple, pious people under assault from forces beyond their comprehension. Historical accounts of the Bell Witch a poltergeist that bedeviled a family of Tennessee farmers in the early 1800s have inspired writers for more than a century. This tale adds little to the debate about the entity's purpose, but manages a credible period pastiche through its depiction of settlers struggling in the spiritual and territorial wilderness of early America. At age 13, Betsy Bell becomes the focus of the witch's torments. For more than a year, the Bell family is subjected to nocturnal noises, rains of stones, blows from invisible hands and, eventually, belligerent back talk from the articulate spirit. Over time, the spirit becomes a part of the household's daily life, unpredictably helpful one moment and destructive the next. Betsy offers more reportage than reflection, her chronicle of the family's forbearance against the being's malicious pranks often seeming no more revealing than a schoolgirl's diary. The author raises the usual speculations for why the spirit manifests most significantly patriarch Jack Bell's sexual molestation of Betsy but never explores them at length. The reason given for Betsy's Job-like suffering, revealed in a Socratic dialogue at the height of book's flashy finale, won't satisfy everyone, but readers will stick with the story to the end, if only because Sanders-Self allows them to share in what her heroine endures. 3-city author tour. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Once again the story of the Bell Witch of Adams, Tennessee, is told in fictional form, here in the words of the person most tormented by it. Betsy Bell, the "darling daughter" of tobacco farmer John and his wife, Lucy, is turning 13 when the disturbances begin. Nighttime noises--of tapping and animal sounds--interrupt the family's sleep, then Betsy becomes the object of slaps, pinpricks, and hair pulling, often losing consciousness. Undeterred by visits from the clergy or the gathering of neighbors and strangers to witness these events, the spirit takes voice, mocking preachers, making predictions, and promising to kill John Bell. Seeming both malignant and benign, the spirit saves Betsy's younger brother's life, helps cure Lucy of pleurisy, reports about her absent older sons, and makes a final warning to Betsy. Sanders-Self hints early on at what causes the spirit's visits, the same explanation given more explicitly in Brent Monahan's 1997 novel The Bell Witch: An American Haunting, a tighter and more satisfactory explication of these documented events. Michele LeberCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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