06:00 PM CDT on Friday, July 23, 2004

By JOY DICKINSON TIPPING / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

Dallasite Francis Ray once again makes us proud to claim her with her latest novel, the bubbly and moving Like the First Time. With each successive book, the talented Ms. Ray moves further from her roots in romances for African-American audiences and closer to general best-selling status.

This invigorating tale of three South Carolina friends who transform friendship into alchemy when life and not-quite-love threaten to squash them reads like Nora Roberts meets Terry McMillan meets Jane Austen. And I mean that as a good thing. Like the First Time also is a lovely testament to the power of a good book club.

Two of Ms. Ray's heroines face nasty comeuppances as the book opens. Claire Bennett, who (a bit smugly, truth be told) thinks her job as a computer repair goddess is secure, gets downsized for the second time in two years. With a nearly bare checking account and a pile of unpaid bills, most courtesy of Derek, her ne'er-do-well brother, Claire fears that she'll lose everything, including the home she inherited from her parents.

Her friend Brooke Dunlap also gets the boot from Claire's company, but Brooke's not worried because she's got mogul Randolph Peterson III wrapped around her pinky. Well, so she thinks. Then randy Randy abandons her with a humiliatingly naked ring finger and a broken-down Jaguar.

The one seemingly happily married component of the trio, Lorraine Everhart, thinks she can solve both Claire's and Brooke's woes via an entrepreneurial brainstorm involving Claire's homemade aromatherapy goodies: candles, bath gels, soaps. When the members of Lorraine's book club pounce on the samples she brings in, Lorraine proposes selling them.

The company, appropriately dubbed Bliss, takes off, and Claire's financial miseries lessen. But commercial success, alas, doesn't rid our princesses of those annoying peas under their respective mattresses. Claire's new relationship needs ironing out; Lorraine's sedate marriage suffers by comparison with the excitement of business success; and Brooke surprises even herself by falling for a blue-collar guy with children.

By book's end, the triptych of friends has survived numerous leaps of faith, kept afloat by their immense love and loyalty for one another. Ms. Ray's dialogue, always acute, gets especially strong display here, with each heroine blessed with a revelatory, distinctive voice.

Once again, Ms. Ray's publishers have put a black woman (or at least the comely legs and hand of one) on her cover in an understandable appeal to her core audience. But this book will appeal to any reader, of any race, who simply yearns for a satisfying story, gorgeously told.

Author and reviewer Joy Dickinson Tipping lives in Corrales, N.M.

Like the First Time
Francis Ray
(St. Martin's Griffin, $13.95 paperback)