You can take the girl out of the bayou, but when it comes to Rebecca Wells, it looks like you can’t take the bayou out of the girl. The Bainbridge Island author has called the Pacific Northwest home for a couple of decades now, but her best-selling books (“Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood,” “Little Altars Everywher e”) are firmly rooted in Louisiana, the state of her birth.

Wells’ latest novel is “The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder,” a boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-back-again story told in Wells’ signature style: languid and descriptive, flecked with sassy humor, and the southern charm poured on as thick and sweet as molasses.