Book Review: The Forgotten Girls

 

The Forgotten Girls

A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America

by Monica Potts

Pub Date 30 May 2023 

 Random House Publishing Group - Random House,  Random House

 Biographies & Memoirs  |  Nonfiction (Adult) 

Random House and Netgalley have provided me with a copy of The Forgotten Girls for review:

The two women became fast friends while growing up gifted and working class in the foothills of the Ozarks. 

Even as they navigated the challenges of their tumultuous family lives and declining town - broken marriages, alcohol abuse, and shuttered stores and factories - the girls bonded over their shared love of reading and learning. As they examined the giant map in their middle-school classroom, tracing their fingers over the world that lay ahead, they vowed to escape it as soon as possible. At the end of the day, Monica left Clinton for college and fulfilled her dreams, but Darci, along with many of her friends, could not.

Years later, while working as a journalist covering poverty, Potts discovered what she had always suspected about Arkansas women: their life expectancy had declined precipitously - the sharpest drop in a century. The decline has been attributed to "deaths of despair" such as suicide, alcoholism, and drug overdoses. However, Potts knew their causes were too complex to be identified through a sociological study. She had grown up with these women, and when she saw Darci again, she found that her childhood friend-addicted to drugs, often homeless and a single mother-was now on the path to becoming a statistic.

This compelling narrative skillfully pinpoints the choices that sent Potts and Darci on such divergent paths, and then widens the lens to explain why these choices are so limited. In The Forgotten Girls, we see an intimate, compassionate portrayal of a population in distress, and we gain a unique insight into the way larger forces shape individual lives, including inheritance, education, religion, and politics.

I give The Forgotten Girls five out of five stars!

Happy Reading!