The forgotten girls a memoir of friendship and lost promise in rural America

"Growing up gifted and poor in small-town Arkansas, 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 declining town and tumultuous family lives-broken marriages, alcohol abuse, and shuttered stores...

Full description

Main Author: Potts, Monica (Author)
Format: Books Print Book
Language: English
Published: New York : Random House, [2023]
Edition: First edition.
Subjects:
Summary: "Growing up gifted and poor in small-town Arkansas, 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 declining town and tumultuous family lives-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 got out, but Darci, along with the rest of their circle of friends, did not. Years later, working as a journalist covering poverty, Monica discovered what she already intuitively knew about the women in Arkansas: Their life expectancy had steeply declined-the sharpest such fall in a century. Most painfully, her once talented and ambitious best friend was now a single mother of two, addicted to meth and prescription drugs, jobless and nearly homeless. What had happened in the years since Monica had left? Why had she escaped while Darci hurtled toward what Monica fears will be a tragic end? What was killing poor white women-and would Darci survive her own life"--
Physical Description: viii, 254 pages ; 22 cm
ISBN: 9780593730898
0593730895
Author Notes: Monica Potts is a senior politics reporter for the website FiveThirtyEight . Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The New Republic, among other publications, and on NPR. She has been a New America fellow and a senior writer with The American Prospect magazine.