"Ya-Yas in Bloom"
by Rebecca Wells
HarperCollins, 258 pp., $24.95

Eight years after "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," which shot to No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list, Seattle-area novelist Rebecca Wells has returned to mine that same rich vein of Ya-Ya-dom.

For those who don't speak Ya-Ya, the term refers to a group of four adventurous and deeply eccentric Louisiana women who bond in early childhood and stick together throughout crises, triumph and the occasional dent in Vivi's 1962 T-Bird. "Divine Secrets" inspired imitation Ya-Ya groups across the country who also get together and give each other secret names (e.g. "Princess Naked-as-a-Jaybird") in emulation. If you don't believe me, a Google search of the term Ya-Ya will set you right back on your heels.

Wells' new book, "Ya-Yas in Bloom," hops around from generation to generation — starting with the 1930s, when the original Ya-Yas first met after 4-year-old Teensy Whitman stuck a pecan up her nose and had to go to the doctor to get it removed. Other chapters, dated in the 1960s and 1990s, present episodes from their later lives, also introducing the Petites Ya-Yas (children) and the Très Petites Ya-Yas (grandchildren) in turn.

The back-and-forth hops in chronology do not enhance the narrative thread of the book. They give the stories a somewhat ad-hoc air, making them seem a collection of vignettes without much cohesive impact, as you would expect from a fully developed novel.

Instead of a real story line, we get "The time it snowed in 1961 and one of the children knocked himself senseless on the glass door trying to get outside." And "The time we drove to Houston for the Beatles concert." And, less happily, "The time one of the Très Petites Ya-Yas got kidnapped in 1994 by the crazy daughter of a small-minded Myrtis Spevey, who always was jealous of Ya-Ya Vivi and her Thunderbird."

At this point, it is probably fair to announce that the charm of the clichéd Iron Butterfly Southern woman, promulgated in stage and screen and fiction, continues to mystify this reviewer. Invariably beautiful, or at least stylishly striking, these charismatic women often possess rather bizarre names (Siddalee, Teensy, Necie, Lulu), invariably dress to kill, and usually drive to kill as well. No object, not even a statue of the Infant Jesus of Prague, is safe from the Ya-Yas' vehicles. Their tolerance for alcohol would shame W.C. Fields. They make energetic but occasionally self-obsessed mothers, capable of sending a son off to school with a garter belt for show-and-tell. They are passionate, fiercely loyal, and they raise personal eccentricity to an art form.

And they're always right. Faced with a crisis of faith, Ya-Ya Caro proclaims: "If God doesn't want me to feel good, then He's a Nazi, and I don't care what He thinks anyway."

This is the mold in which the four Ya-Yas are cast, and there is a lot to be said for their joie de vivre, exuberance and loyalty, even if you have a sneaking sympathy for the husbands and children who have to deal with these joined-at-the-hip prima donnas. It's clear that they have a great deal of fun, always kicking up their stiletto heels and putting on impromptu musicales in which they are sticklers for detail (right down to donning violet contact lenses for an impersonation of Liz Taylor as Queen of the Three Wise Women). And the appreciative men murmur of the 60-ish Ya-Ya in the "I Dream of Jeannie" harem costume, "Isn't she something else?"

Indeed she is. They all are.

The charm here is in the details, the dialogue, and Wells' canny observations about life in Thornton, La. After the kidnapping, as one worried family member heads for the sporting goods store, Wells observes: " 'Sporting goods' in Louisiana does not mean jogging shoes. Sport means hunting. Sport means shooting guns, rifles, firearms." Wells also vividly re-creates the Catholic-school ambience, with Sister Mary Agatha deciding that the Beatles were a mortal sin.

Episodic and fragmentary as "Ya-Yas in Bloom" might be, Ya-Ya fans are going to love this one.

Melinda Bargreen is the classical music critic for The Seattle Times.