The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America
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“The Forgotten Girls is much more than a memoir; it’s the unflinching story of rural women trying to live in the most rugged, ultra-religious, and left-behind places in America.”—Beth Macy, author of Dopesick
Growing up gifted and working-class poor in the foothills of the Ozarks, Monica and Darci became fast friends. The girls bonded over a shared love of reading and learning, even as they navigated the challenges of their tumultuous family lives and declining town—broken marriages, alcohol abuse, and shuttered stores and factories. They pored over the giant map in their middle-school classroom, tracing their fingers over the world that awaited them, vowing to escape. In the end, Monica left Clinton for college and fulfilled her dreams, but Darci, along with many in their circle of friends, did not.
Years later, working as a journalist covering poverty, Potts discovered what she already intuitively knew about the women in Arkansas: Their life expectancy had dropped steeply—the sharpest such fall in a century. This decline has been attributed to “deaths of despair”—suicide, alcoholism, and drug overdoses—but Potts knew their causes were too complex to identify in 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, a single mother—was now on track to becoming a statistic.
In this gripping narrative, Potts deftly pinpoints the choices that sent her and Darci on such different paths and then widens the lens to explain why those choices are so limited. The Forgotten Girls is a profound, compassionate look at a population in trouble, and a uniquely personal account of the way larger forces, such as inheritance, education, religion, and politics, shape individual lives.
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Monica Potts. (2023). The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America. Unabridged Books on Tape.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Monica Potts. 2023. The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America. Books on Tape.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Monica Potts, The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America. Books on Tape, 2023.
MLA Citation (style guide)Monica Potts. The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America. Unabridged Books on Tape, 2023.
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- Talented and ambitious, Monica Potts and her best friend, Darci, were both determined to make something of themselves. How did their lives turn out so different?
“The Forgotten Girls is much more than a memoir; it’s the unflinching story of rural women trying to live in the most rugged, ultra-religious, and left-behind places in America.”—Beth Macy, author of Dopesick
Growing up gifted and working-class poor in the foothills of the Ozarks, Monica and Darci became fast friends. The girls bonded over a shared love of reading and learning, even as they navigated the challenges of their tumultuous family lives and declining town—broken marriages, alcohol abuse, and shuttered stores and factories. They pored over the giant map in their middle-school classroom, tracing their fingers over the world that awaited them, vowing to escape. In the end, Monica left Clinton for college and fulfilled her dreams, but Darci, along with many in their circle of friends, did not.
Years later, working as a journalist covering poverty, Potts discovered what she already intuitively knew about the women in Arkansas: Their life expectancy had dropped steeply—the sharpest such fall in a century. This decline has been attributed to “deaths of despair”—suicide, alcoholism, and drug overdoses—but Potts knew their causes were too complex to identify in 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, a single mother—was now on track to becoming a statistic.
In this gripping narrative, Potts deftly pinpoints the choices that sent her and Darci on such different paths and then widens the lens to explain why those choices are so limited. The Forgotten Girls is a profound, compassionate look at a population in trouble, and a uniquely personal account of the way larger forces, such as inheritance, education, religion, and politics, shape individual lives. - reviews
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January 30, 2023
FiveThirtyEight reporter Potts debuts with a compassionate look at the rapid decline in life expectancy among “the least educated white Americans.” In 2015, Potts began returning to her Ozark hometown of Clinton, Ark., to investigate this trend and reconnected with her childhood best friend, Darci Brawner, a single mother of two who had fallen into drug addiction. In the book’s first section, “Causes,” Potts recounts her teenage years with the free-spirited, caring, and intelligent Darci, and documents how Darci’s partying and sexual experimentation drove a wedge between them. By the time Potts gave her high school’s valedictory address, Darci had gone through a miscarriage, tried crystal meth, and missed so many days of school that she couldn’t graduate. The second half of the narrative, “Effects,” is a harrowing chronicle of Darci’s downward spiral after high school and Potts’s fraught attempts to help her after they reconnected. Throughout, Potts draws on extensive interviews with friends and family to reveal how poverty, generational trauma, substance abuse, and the suffocating righteousness of the evangelical church limit women’s options in places like Clinton. It’s a potent study of what ails the depressed pockets of rural America. Agent: Elyse Cheney, Cheney Agency.
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June 10, 2024
Narrating her own debut memoir, political reporter Potts addresses the problems of growing up without much money in America's heartland. With a solemn voice, Potts contrasts her life with that of her childhood friend, Darci. Both grew up in Clinton, AR, in the Ozark Mountains, and were gifted students who longed to escape the poverty around them. Potts eventually leaves Clinton to attend college at Bryn Mawr, but Darci stays home. As a reporter, Potts reconnects with Darci and discovers she is a single mother who has experienced addiction, abusive relationships, and homelessness. It seems that her own escape from Clinton was nearly miraculous. Potts compassionately describes some factors that make life difficult in communities such as Clinton. Evangelical religious beliefs in predestination and the role of women as subservient to men are only two of the many problems she identifies. Lack of information, parental supervision, jobs and services, an unwillingness to allow government intervention, and easy access to drugs all play a part in a cycle of poverty, disease, and early death. VERDICT Potts's compassionate and sensitively read memoir is a challenging but timely listen, illuminating a little-known side of rural America.--Joanna M. Burkhardt
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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“The Forgotten Girls is much more than a memoir; it’s the unflinching story of rural women trying to live in the most rugged, ultra-religious, and left-behind places in America.”—Beth Macy, author of Dopesick
Growing up gifted and working-class poor in the foothills of the Ozarks, Monica and Darci became fast friends. The girls bonded over a shared love of reading and learning, even as they navigated the challenges of their tumultuous family lives and declining town—broken marriages, alcohol abuse, and shuttered stores and factories. They pored over the giant map in their middle-school classroom, tracing their fingers over the world that awaited them, vowing to escape. In the end, Monica left Clinton for college and fulfilled her dreams, but Darci, along... - sortTitle
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