Wells continues the saga of Sidda and Vivi Walker in her follow-up, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, and this time the mood is considerably lightened as she takes her characters back in time via a collection of letters, clippings, and scrapbooks--the "divine secrets" of the title. Here a younger, more sympathetic Vivi shares the limelight with her Ya-Ya pals, Teensy, Caro, and Necie. From skinny-dipping in the town water tower to boozing it up at the spring cotillion, these Southern-fried hell-raisers prove what everyone has always suspected--that "it's so much fun being a bad girl!" But you don't have to be bad to enjoy Rebecca Wells's take on family, friendship, and the ties that bind for a lifetime. --Margaret Prior

“A very entertaining and, ultimately, deeply moving novel about the complex bonds between mother and daughter.” — Washington Post

“An insightful, delicious novel.” — Oregonian

“A big, blowzy romp through the rainbow eccentricities of three generations of crazy bayou debutantes trying to survive marriage, motherhood, and pain, relying always on eah other… A novel of wide reach and lots of colors: fun in a breathless sort of way.” — Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Divine Secrets is funny, funny, funny.” — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

“One heck of a rollicking good read…” — Columbus Dispatch

“An entertaining and engrossing novel filled with humor and heartbreak… Readers will envy Vivi her Ya-Ya ‘sisters’ and Sidda her lover, who is one of the most appealing men to be found in recent mainstream fiction.” — Library Journal

“Hard to resist…Wells offers up some appealing characters and good stories.” — Chicago Tribune

“Every woman should have a pack of buddies like the Ya-Yas.” — Albuquerque Journal

“Mary McCarthy, Anne Rivers Siddons, and a host of others have portrayed the power and value of female friendships, but no one has done it with more grace, charm, talent, and power than Rebecca Wells does in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.” — Richmond Times-Dispatch

“An enjoyable novel with much to recommend it… It is rich stuff and Wells tells it well.” — Seattle Times

“Unforgettable… By turns comic and poignant, Wells’ latest entry fulfills the promise of her award–winning debut novel, Little Altars Everywhere. It speaks eloquently to what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a wife — and somehow, at last, a person.” — Charlotte Observer

“Wells’ Louisiana is thick with sensual excesses — bayou French, pralines and sour cream cookies, crayfish etouffee, honeysuckle–smothered trellises, camellias and jasmine… In Divine Secrets, you can hear the ice cubes clink on every page… Wells’ book succeeds marvelously.” — Seattle Weekly

“Sensitive, spellbinding… a wonderfully irreverent look at life in small–town Louisiana from the thirties on up through the eyes of the Ya–Yas, a gang of merry, smart, brave, poignant, and unforgettable godesses.” — Booklist

“Readers who like their books about the human condition spiced witha Southern drawl won’t want to miss this one.” — Mississippi Sun Herald

“The sweet and sad and goofy monkey–dance of life, as performed by a bevy of unforgettable Southern belles in a verdant garden of moonlit prose. Poignantly coo–coo, the Ya-Yas (and their Petites Ya-Yas) will prance, priss, ponder and party their way into your sincere affection.” — Tom Robbins, author of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

“I read the first two pages and I said… I haven’t heard a white woman talk like this in literature before.” — Terry McMillan, San Francisco Chronicle