Ya-Ya Author Enjoys the Success While Dealing With Illness
Rebecca Wells became a household word with the sucess of her Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, about the lives and friendship of four Louisianna women. It's follow-up "Little Altars Everywhere" cemented her success. As the third book about the life-long friends is released, "Ya-Yas in Bloom" Wells talks for the first time about an illness she has been battling for seven years, as her books began climbing the bestseller lists. After mysterious bouts of dizzyness, hypersensitivity to sound and respiratory infections, Wells was finally diagnosed with Lyme disease and babesiosis, both spread by tick bites. Wells' treatment includes antibiotics and antimalarial drugs, but the climb back to normalcy is slow, she says. The most she can write is four or five hour a day, half her normal time. At her worst she could only work for twenty minutes. She finds strength through her friendship with author Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club) who also suffers from the disease.