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Beth Macy

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How do you get inspired to write?

Beth Macy Deadlines help! Seriously, a story has to move me for me to dig into it. Then teasing out the facts, unraveling one thread at a time, becomes this gre…moreDeadlines help! Seriously, a story has to move me for me to dig into it. Then teasing out the facts, unraveling one thread at a time, becomes this great search. In "Truevine," the most astonishing things didn’t revolve around the sideshow spectacle but rather around what ordinary African-Americans faced during Jim Crow. The daily cruelties didn’t seem to shift so much between the end of slavery and civil rights. To bring those truths to light, I had to piece together so many disparate threads, driving octogenarians and nonagenarians and even centenarians around the old neighborhoods, sifting through old property deeds and maps, and reading oral histories. Archival research only took me so far; to really put meat on the bones of the story, I had to go out and really talk to people on the ground. And that, to me, is inspiring. Reporting is such fun, though -- there are still days I can't believe I get paid to do it!
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Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Beth Macy That’s hard to answer because there’s almost no time in my career when I haven’t been thinking about the story that resulted in "Truevine." Like other…moreThat’s hard to answer because there’s almost no time in my career when I haven’t been thinking about the story that resulted in "Truevine." Like others who’d asked before me to do the story, I’m sure I was initially attracted to the great yarn that it was. But once I really got to know the brothers' caregiver and great-niece, Nancy Saunders, and understood deeply what she’d gone through to protect her uncles — a process that took a couple decades — I saw the Muse brothers’ story not as a great yarn but also as a way to reflect society at large. Were the brothers better off, ultimately, traveling in the circus than they would have been at home in Jim Crow Virginia? That question led me to explore sharecropping and life during segregation; all the untold micro-aggressions black Virginians faced, including the Muse family, as well as how the general circus-going public, whose fascination with sideshows said more about the audiences, truly, than the freaks.

There were a lot of layers of meaning and universality tucked within this one outlier story. The longer I worked on it, the more interesting and multi-layered it became to me. This book could not have been written by an outsider; it could not have been produced in a hurry. It had to be pieced at by a local, on a slow simmer. I’m not generally the world’s most patient person, but this one was worth the wait.

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Beth Macy’s books

Average rating: 4.02 · 57,124 ratings · 6,921 reviews · 11 distinct works • Similar authors

	Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America 4.07 avg rating — 45,006 ratings — published 2018 — 31 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South 3.49 avg rating — 3,763 ratings — published 2016 — 19 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local - and Helped Save an American Town 3.86 avg rating — 2,968 ratings — published 2014 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Finding Tess: A Mother's Search for Answers in a Dopesick America 3.89 avg rating — 2,170 ratings — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Raising Lazarus really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1,995 ratings — published 2022 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America 4.18 avg rating — 1,173 ratings — published 2025 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	"The Girl in the Window" and Other True Tales: An Anthology with Tips for Finding, Reporting, and Writing Nonfiction Narratives by Lane DeGregory, Beth Macy (Goodreads Author) (Foreword) 4.83 avg rating — 46 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Artemis 2014 by Beth Macy (Goodreads Author), Jeri Rogers (Editor), Bill White (Illustrator) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hunkering down: despite the massive economic problems plaguing the newspaper business, some journalists refuse to scramble for the ... An article from: American Journalism Review 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Artemis 2014 by Beth Macy (Goodreads Author), Bill White (Illustrations), Jeri Rogers (Editor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Beth Macy's Blog

Parachute journalism and rural America’s revenge

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Below is an essay I first published for The Ochberg Society, a now-defunct grassroots group of journalists who cover trauma, upon the publication of FACTORY MAN in 2014. I’ve been thinking a lot about the people featured in my essay and in that book recently. On Election Day, I traveled back to Bassett, Va., to talk about my just-out book, TRUEVINE, a nonfiction narrative about r

Beth is Currently Reading

Beth is currently reading

Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local - and Helped Save an American Town

by Beth Macy (Goodreads Author)

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May 08, 2014 08:39AM

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Beth voted for Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America as Readers' Favorite Memoir in the Opening Round of the 2025 Goodreads Choice Awards. Cast Your Vote
Nov 12, 2025 12:19PM · like
Beth and 2 other people liked Amy's review of Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America: "Stop what you’re doing, and read this. The book digs into where we are (driving off a cliff) and how we got here. “Trauma leads to rigid thinking,” kind of sums it all up."
Nov 05, 2025 10:16AM · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Paper Girl by Beth Macy. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Paper Girl by Beth Macy <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Beth and 1 other person liked Erica's review of Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America: "Maybe the most important book I’ve read this year. "
Nov 05, 2025 10:16AM · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Paper Girl by Beth Macy. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Paper Girl by Beth Macy <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Beth and 1 other person liked Paul's review of Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America: "Required reading for understanding the world we live in today in the U.S. Macy is an engaging writer full of heart. "
Nov 05, 2025 10:16AM · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Paper Girl by Beth Macy. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Paper Girl by Beth Macy <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Beth rated a book it was amazing Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America by Beth Macy (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Jul 04, 2025 10:52AM · 2 likes · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Paper Girl by Beth Macy. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Paper Girl by Beth Macy <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

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Quotes by Beth Macy (?)

“America’s approach to its opioid problem is to rely on Battle of Dunkirk strategies—leaving the fight to well-meaning citizens, in their fishing vessels and private boats—when what’s really needed to win the war is a full-on Normandy Invasion.”
― Beth Macy, Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America

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“Opioids are now on pace to kill as many Americans in a decade as HIV/AIDS has since it began, with leveling-off projections tenuously predicted in a nebulous, far-off future: sometime after 2020.”
― Beth Macy, Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America

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“Americans, representing 4.4 percent of the world’s population, consume roughly 30 percent of its opioids.”
― Beth Macy, Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America

8 likes

See all Beth Macy's quotes »

Polls

Time to vote for our Sept/Oct Nonfiction book...

Poll will remain open until August 20th. Thanks

Riverman: An American Odyssey by Ben McGrath

9 votes, 36.0%

Femina by Janina Ramírez

8 votes, 32.0%

Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal by Conor Grennan

5 votes, 20.0%

Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South by Beth Macy

3 votes, 12.0%

25 total votes

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