Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Ya-Yas in Bloom: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Ya-Yas in Bloom: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Ya-Yas in Bloom: A Novel
    Ebook364 pages5 hours

    Ya-Yas in Bloom: A Novel

    By Rebecca Wells

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Rebecca Wells's wonderful third book in her Ya-Ya trilogy, which includes Little Altars Everywhere and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, is sure to provide reading that makes you laugh and cry, a book that will break your heart and mend it again.

    Ya-Yas in Bloom reveals the roots of the Ya-Yas' friendship in the 1930s, following Vivi, Teensy, Caro and Necie through sixty years of marriage, child-raising, and hair-raising family secrets.

    When four-year-old Teensy Whitman prisses one time too many and stuffs a big old pecan up her nose, she sets off the chain of events that lead Vivi, Teensy, Caro, and Necie to become true sister-friends. Using as narration the alternating voices of Vivi and the Petite Ya-Yas, Siddalee and Baylor Walker, as well as other denizens of Thornton, Louisiana, Wells show us the Ya-Yas in love and at war with convention. Through crises of faith and hilarious lapses of parenting skills, brushes with alcoholism and glimpses of the dark reality of racial bigotry, the Ya-Ya values of unconditional loyalty, high style, and Louisiana sass shine through.

    But in the Ya-Yas' inimitable way, these four remarkable women also teach their children about the Mysteries: the wonder of snow in the deep South, the possibility that humans are made of stars, and the belief that miracles do happen. And they need a miracle when old grudges and wounded psyches lead to a heartbreaking crime...and the dynamic web of sisterhood is the only safety net strong enough to hold families together and endure.

    After two bestsellers and a blockbuster movie, the Ya-Yas have become part of American culture -- icons for the power of women's friendship. Ya-Yas in Bloom continues the saga, giving us more Ya-Ya lore, spun out in the rich patois of the Louisiana bayou country and brim full of the Ya-Ya message to embrace life and each other with joy.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 17, 2009
    ISBN9780061758843
    Unavailable
    Ya-Yas in Bloom: A Novel
    Author

    Rebecca Wells

    Writer, actor, and playwright Rebecca Wells is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Ya-Yas in Bloom, Little Altars Everywhere, and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, which was made into a feature film. A native of Louisiana, she now lives on an island in the Pacific Northwest.

    Read more from Rebecca Wells

    Related to Ya-Yas in Bloom

    Related ebooks

    Sagas For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Love Sounds

      Oct 10, 2022

      My daughter’s getting married. She is thirty-two and beautiful. I remember—it seems like just the other day—when she was sprawled and breathless. There she was, flat on her back, covered by pink panda pajamas, the odor of sleep drenched in her pillow

      13 min read

    • Article

      The Ones We Sent Away

      Aug 7, 2023

      The Ones We Sent Away
      47 min read

    • Article

      Heave’s Whisky

      Feb 27, 2024

      Heave’s Whisky
      7 min read

    • Article

      Let The Daisies Grow

      Feb 2, 2021

      Let The Daisies Grow
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Doll

      Apr 14, 2022

      The Doll
      5 min read

    • Article

      Cynthia Nixon

      Oct 25, 2020

      Cynthia Nixon
      3 min read

    • Article

      Close to My Heart

      Oct 27, 2020

      Close to My Heart
      6 min read

    • Article

      After “The End”

      Oct 10, 2022

      I walked down the road with a hunched back and a wet cigarette in my mouth—the fire had died a while back. My hands were tucked into the pockets of my jacket, and my hair fell over my face, limiting my sight. But I wasn’t really seeing where I was go

      10 min read

    • Article

      The Girl NEXT DOOR

      Jan 13, 2021

      The Girl NEXT DOOR
      6 min read

    • Article

      All By Myself

      Apr 28, 2020

      All By Myself
      6 min read

    • Article

      I’ll Be There

      Oct 25, 2019

      I’ll Be There
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Gentle STIRRING

      Mar 13, 2024

      A Gentle STIRRING
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Rainbow Connection

      Mar 26, 2022

      Miracles come to us in every shape, size and even color. God’s blessings flow across a spectrum, from everyday reassurances of his presence to out-of-this-world experiences; each divine mystery as vibrant as the colors of the rainbow. These stories s

      5 min read

    • Article

      Ongoingness

      Apr 21, 2022

      Ongoingness
      8 min read

    • Article

      From The heart

      Nov 26, 2020

      Dear Sally I was on a ghost hunting tour for charity that my daughter had arranged at Ruthin, Wales. I just kept taking photos even though I couldn’t see anything and when I got home the next day and uploaded them to my PC, I saw what looked like an

      5 min read

    • Article

      END of Days

      Dec 21, 2021

      END of Days
      4 min read

    • Article

      Womankind’s Kindness Challenge

      Jan 30, 2019

      Day one: I am sure I don’t actually have time for this. I mean four kids, husband, dog, and cat, I don’t feel I can go out and feed the masses. But then what is an act of kindness? Mother Teresa said that if you want to really change the world, “Go h

      29 min read

    • Article

      Riccardo

      Jun 14, 2022

      My understanding of my family’s religion was that we didn’t have to go to church if we didn’t want to and that our belief in God was tenuous at best. I grasped the seventh principle, “the interconnected web of all existence,” and I understood the hum

      14 min read

    • Article

      Lorraine Kelly

      Oct 31, 2022

      Lorraine Kelly
      6 min read

    • Article

      Q&A Percy Daggs III

      Mar 26, 2022

      Q&A Percy Daggs III
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Family Plot

      May 7, 2020

      The Family Plot
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Idiots

      Feb 26, 2021

      The Idiots
      18 min read

    • Article

      Lineal Gaps

      Apr 6, 2021

      Lineal Gaps
      15 min read

    • Article

      Till We Meet Again

      Aug 27, 2020

      Till We Meet Again
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Magical Life Of Liv

      Aug 12, 2019

      The Magical Life Of Liv
      5 min read

    • Article

      From The heart

      Oct 27, 2020

      Dear Sally My step daughter often feels spirits around her. The other day I was talking to her on Facetime and I thought her husband was standing behind her until she told me he was at work. She took a picture of some poles she was selling and later

      5 min read

    Reviews for Ya-Yas in Bloom

    3.5/5

    405 ratings11 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      (#5 in the 2007 book challenge)I was a big fan of her other two books that told this same story, they remind me of my mom and it's all very pleasant and nostalgic. I was absolutely fine with the fact that this book is going over a lot of the same information (the same way I like to chat with my mom even though I have already chatted with her before), but was a little disappointed that this one was a bit glurgier than the others.Grade: BRecommended: If you a. enjoyed her other books, and b. don't mind going over the material again.
    • 3/5
      I didn't enjoy this book. The writing is good but the characters had no appeal for me; seemed artificial and mostly insipid. Very little was actually going on. Think about this: an entire chapter was given over to two children crawling under the pews at church and pulling another child's hair. I will admit that by the time I reached the end of the book, I was skimming more than I was reading.
    • 4/5
      ya-ya's as kids. loved it
    • 2/5
      This is the follow-up to the bestseller "Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood." I know that this series might catch flak for being girly, but the books are decent. They are set mostly in 1950s Louisana, where four mamas cause a ruckus. They curse, drink, run over statues of baby Jesus, and ride elephants, all with southern accents. If you want a book about Thunderbirds, cheatin' husbands, guest spots on cowboy tv shows, families sticking together, bitchy grandmas, jealous smalltowners who can't handle the glamour, and Beatlemania, it's all right. The stories are family-style, so different people narrate each one, which definitely makes some chapters better than others, but it's all probably better than anything I'll ever write, so I'll take it!
    • 2/5
      While I am a fan of some of Wells' other books, this does not number among them. it felt forced, perhaps an attempt to satisfy the appetites of Ya-Ya fans out of bits and pieces of deleted material that didn't make it into the final editions of the other books.
    • 4/5
      Although given the subtitle "a novel," this book is really a collection of short stories about the beloved Ya-Ya sisterhood and their families. We travel (mostly chronologically) from the Ya-Yas first meeting each other as precocious and mischief-making 4-year-olds up until their days as grandmothers. Some stories are told in first person; others in third person, and we hear from the point of view of many different characters (although mostly skewed toward the Walker family). Along the way, we meet a host of characters, including the Ya-Yas' own parents and in some cases, their parent's parents. The stories also cover a wide range of topics and arouse a number of emotions from humor to heartbreak. It is really an eye-opener (or perhaps a vivid reminder) to how just a few words from a parent can mean so much to a child. The final story in the collection is perhaps a bit too long and also saccharine, but otherwise I would not change a thing about this delightful book.
    • 3/5
      I didn't like this nearly as much as the other two. All the characters seemed to have lost their personalities. They weren't fun, spontaneous, faulty, spunky characters anymore. They were cliche, too perfect and movie-esque. The end of the book felt like a Hallmark commercial.
    • 1/5
      I was SOOOoo disappointed in this book. It lacks any of the power of the earlier books. The Characters are mostly all here, but the book just lacks focus. NOT recommended for anyone. If I could give it ZERO stars, I would.
    • 5/5
      I "read" this book on audio CD's and loved it. The narrator, Judith Ivey, did a superb job ... normally I cringe to hear Southern accents rendered by actors, but she did just fine. Perhaps it was her presentation, or the fact that the audio edition I had was abridged, but the negative aspects of the book I read about in other reviews were missing in my experience of the book, and it may be the presenter and the pruning made for a better book. The abridged version has a number of stories, but most concern Baylor and the story of the kidnapping and everyone's reaction to it is covered by half the disc time. Verging on sentimental, but coming across more as a blend of tender and strong, funny and compassionate, it is a great audio book and as it relates the story, I think it is the best of the three Ya-Ya books.
    • 5/5
      This book tells the story offour women in Thornton, Louisiana, from the day they met in the 1930s assmall children themselves, till they are old. They call themselves the"Ya-Yas" and have been inseparable for their entire lives. Each of themis unique and special, but together their personalities blend in perfectharmony. It is ultimately a story of female friendship, love andsecurity about the Ya-Yas, their children (The Petites Ya-Yas) andeventually their grandchildren (the Tres Petites). It is a story ofabuse and alcoholism, secrets and mental illness, but throughout it istold with humor and warmth. The books are not your typical trilogy, inthat they don't flow chronologically, each taking up where the last oneleft off. Instead, the basic story is told in the first book andfleshed out in the other two. The setting is the Louisiana bayou, oneof my favorites, filled with Cajun references and parties, bourbon andbranch water, Catholic school, war and just Life with a capital L.
    • 3/5
      My overall feeling for this book was disappointment. Despite the fact that this was the abridged version to begin with, even this 5-CD set was too long for me. I just wanted it to be done so that I could move on to something else. I'm not sure how to pinpoint why this book failed me so. It may have been the fact that it had been so long since I'd read the other Ya-Ya books & I just couldn't remember enough to relate this one to the previous reads. It may have been the fact that this one was written as a series of vignettes in an almost random order, giving this book a disjointed feel. And because of that, I never felt like the book ended up going anywhere. Or maybe I've simply outgrown the Ya-Ya's and have moved on to prefer other types of literature. Whatever the case, this one just didn't do it for me.