Long before Rebecca Wells even thought about writing The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, there were groups of women all across the country who had friendships that were rooted in grade school and spanned a lifetime. One such group, planted right here in Texarkana, Arkansas, during the late 1940s and '50s, didn't realize that their friendships would last through graduations, and marriages, and childbirth, much less be viable through grandchildren, aging parents, and retirement. But it has. Friendships, over the course of a woman's life, come and go. Work friends, church friends, and acquaintances all have a place, but the true friends, that are made as adolescents, the ones that you cannot hear from for months at a time and then pick up the phone like you've never missed a day, are the people who are there for a lifetime. The Texarkana Ya -Yas, as FSLM has fondly chosen to call the women who grace the cover, began with a few girls at Miss Patty Roberts and Miss Mary Carter's kindergarten at Fairview Elementary but grew over the years to a total of thirteen members of "their group" by the time high school rolled around. Some of these women have moved off with jobs and families, but the core of the seven cover models have all remained close to their roots.