all started with an e-mail from Jennifer Litchman six years ago.

The Annapolis resident sent the message to Wall Street Journal columnist Jeffrey Zaslow after he wrote a piece about women's friendships. Litchman told the writer about her group of childhood friends from Ames, Iowa and how their relationship had endured over the decades.

Flash-forward to today, and Litchman and her friends are the stars of a new book by Zaslow that's near the top of nonfiction best-seller lists. "The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship" was released about a month ago by Gotham Books...