The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America

by Monica Potts

An acclaimed journalist tries to understand how she escaped her small-town in Arkansas while her brilliant friend could not, and, in the process, illuminates the unemployment, drug abuse, sexism and evangelicalism killing poor, rural white women all over America.

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 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 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, 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. She returned to Clinton to report the story, trying to understand the societal factors driving the disturbing trends in the rural south. As she reconnects with Darci, she finds that her once talented and ambitious best friend is now a statistic: a single mother of two, addicted to meth and prescription drugs, jobless and nearly homeless. Painfully aware that Darci's fate could have been hers, she retraces the moments of decision and chance in each of their lives that led such similar women toward two such different destinies.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Audiobook, Sociology, Biography, Politics, Book Club

254 pages, Paperback

First published April 18, 2023

Reviews

[Sabina Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

Review of an uncorrected proof copy.

This was an interesting look into how insular life can be in rural small-town America. The title claims the memoir to be about friendship and lost promise, both of which are present, but the overall story reads more as a commentary on the town itself.

Potts talks about a great deal here - sexism, racism, classism and so on - but she doesn't seem to have anything to actually say about these issues by the end of the book. In fact, I found the last quarter frustrating and uncompelling.

Central to the narrative is Potts' childhood best friend, Darci, who presents as a sort-of mirror to what Potts might have become if she had stayed in Clinton. Darci is portrayed as a washed up drug addict committing crimes left, right and centre, kids in tow and a string of men in orbit. Her story is tragic and at times unnerving, but if she is the focus of this book, where does that leave Potts? This memoir can't decide who it wants to follow, and the jumping between people and timelines without direction is disjointed. One minute we're with Darci in court, then the pandemic hits (the author has no real takeaways from this for the town except their low vaccination rates and political leanings), then back to Darci in and out of jail with no link to the pandemic. Was that necessary? What are we talking about here, the town or Darci?

Potts wants to show lost promise in Darci. Obviously, it's there, and the years of their childhood are the most interesting to read about. Their clear split in school that only widened into adulthood was genuinely moving, and you can see the elements of their environment that created the wedge. Again, Potts doesn't really have a commentary on the issues in the town for youth, and I kept turning the page expecting some insight beyond blatant expectations of sexism. That isn't new news. How do we solve it, change it? Where does it land for these young women who are now in high school in Clinton?

The 'reconnection' of Darci and Potts as adults felt transactional, even on paper. There is a point where Potts is driving Darci on a roadtrip and internally questions whether her friend is "using" her and others. Okay, but what about you using her? It's made somewhat apparent that for several years into their reconnection, Darci is unaware that Potts is going to be using their conversations in a book. Darci does consent to it later, but the impression is given that some of their conversations are recorded before she knows this. So while yes, Potts is performing some acts of service, she is doing it at least in part in pursuit of work reasons. This really grated on me, partly because the author - whether she subconsciously meant to or not - has injected a sense of superiority into every page in which she discusses the lives of other Clinton residents. Alright, I get it, you're the gifted one who got away. (Even her blurb on the back refers to her as gifted, not sure that's necessary but okay, go off). If you want me to feel the lost promise and friendship in Darci like the title is promoting, don't portray her in such a caricaturish way later in life while you're doing the reporter thing, without acknowledging what part your professional life plays in this relationship and its portrayal now. For me, that is why the earlier chapters work, and the later ones don't - the integrity of their relationship is gone.

Another strange choice was to just throw in near the end of the book the author had decided to move back, without any real explanation. I'm sorry, but to spend so long writing about how much you wanted to leave the place and never return, not explaining the choice to move back was almost laughable. I suppose it was to do this reporting for the book, but that just makes it feel even cheaper to be bemoaning the state of the town and its residents when you moved back there for a social experiment.

For a memoir, there is not enough introspection here for me, personally. The ending is abrupt and not in a thought-provoking way. I feel like this needed another few years of work to be published as a book, or should have been kept to an article. The author hasn't given me a single new view to take away, other than that life for these people categorically sucks, and America is fucked.

For a better look into addiction, read Dopesick.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her mom's only goal for her, Cassandra told me, was to graduate high school without getting pregnant

The first half is fascinating as Monica recalls her childhood and adolescence with her best friend Darci, growing up in a small-town in Arkansas where everything is limited: money, jobs, ambition. Generation seems to follow generation where lives are blighted by low educational achievements, poverty, abuse, pregnancy, early marriage, domestic violence, alcoholism, drug abuse and adherence to a religious belief that says all this is god's intention so don't bother trying to change it.

Potts' question is how did she manage to stick to their joint goal of leaving while Darci got dragged under - and there are no easy answers. Both girls were bright and clever, getting top grades through school but from there their lives increasingly diverged.

The second half starts to lose its way as Potts increasingly throws in research to prove her points - points that don't really need proving anyway and which are well publicised even for us in the UK.

What is clear is how systemic the problems are: low employment prospects, teenage pregnancy because the religious cultural stranglehold forbids sex education and promotes early marriage, misogynistic mindsets that mean girls are raised to have few expectations other than to be wives and mothers, education counselors in schools who don't seem to be aware of scholarships and financial aid for university (can this be right?) thus locking people into a poverty loop...

The religious conservatism seems especially pernicious as it absolves communities of all hope and desire for change - it's striking that the town of Clinton didn't believe in covid vaccinations as god would decide when your life would end, feared peaceful BLM protests more than covid... and voted overwhelmingly for Trump.

A suffocating story for hopelessness lit only by the long friendship between two girls, one of whom seems to be drowning while the other can do little to save her.

Many thanks to Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley

[Alyssa Bernhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who grew up in a small, rural community and moved far away for college and life beyond, I related so deeply to Monica’s story. The details of Monica’s hometown and upbringing were so validating to me. While I’ve never moved back, I juggled a lot of the feelings brought forth in the book as I came home from college to friends having more babies, engaging in abusive relationships, or deep into drugs while I was living a completely different life.

Monica’s tenderness and empathy for Darci was so touching. I can’t remember the last time I highlighted a book as much as The Forgotten Girls. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the challenges of rural Southern communities, especially someone with first hand experience.

[Liralen · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Clinton, Arkansas, where Potts grew up, options were slim. "In high school," she writes, "I feared I only had two paths forward in life. One was to get stuck in Clinton and start having babies as soon as possible. The other was to go away to college. I didn't know many people, let alone daughters of plumbers, who went to college, stayed for four years, and graduated with a degree, except for my teachers. But I imagined college was my safest exit from Clinton" (loc. 1358*). Potts and her best friend, Darci, were both poor, but they had the drive to get out, and they had the grades, and they knew that Clinton wouldn't be their forever place—they'd go to college, they'd make something of themselves. And Potts did just that: went to Bryn Mawr, found stability and a career path and the American Dream, if you will.

But this book isn't really about Potts's path. Instead it's an investigation into Darci's life—into how, when Potts was getting degrees and white-collar jobs, Darci ended up spiralling further and further through addiction and prison and homelessness and on it goes. Potts wrote this with Darci's full knowledge, and so she was able to interview both Darci and many people in Darci's life, and to use years of Darci's diaries and sometimes paperwork to fill in gaps.

I thought a lot about Venn diagrams when reading this. At first I thought Darci's circumstances could be illustrated by a fairly simple Venn diagram, with perhaps four circles—poverty, addiction, abuse, maybe lack of education. They can all feed into each other, meaning that more overlaps can make it harder to take even one thing out of the equation...but even if you can take one thing out of the equation, there are still the rest to contend with, and there's no guarantee that things won't get worse rather than better. But to really grasp the extent of Darci's situation, you'd have to expand the diagram: poverty, addiction, abuse, lack of education; then also incarceration (and other run-ins with the law), dysfunctional family life, lack of opportunities, parenting without resources, a societal tendency to view poverty and addiction as moral failings, a simple lack of expectation from others that she would, or could, be more. (We're gonna need a bigger diagram.)

There aren't easy answers here, or an easy conclusion. For the sake of spoilers, I'll avoid details about Darci as the book moves into the present day, but the Clinton of the end of the book is much like the Clinton of the beginning of the book, except poorer and with fewer opportunities and with a much bigger meth problem. But Potts isn't really trying to answer the question of "What will fix this?"—she's saying, instead, "these are some of the many, many ways in which life can be incredibly hard for women in these poor, rural towns." It feels like a cliché to say so, but the book is both compassionate and unflinching.

Readers interested in the experiences of women in the small-town South may also like Hill Women, Kin, and Cottonmouths.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*I read a review copy, so quotes may not be final.

[CanadianReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an absorbing and occasionally grim response to research that Monica Potts became familiar with in the 2010s. In 2012, population health experts at the University of Illinois had observed a disturbing trend: rural white women without high-school diplomas were dying five years younger than a similar female cohort from the previous generation. In the decade that followed, one study after another showed that the least educated white Americans were dying earlier than they had in the past. Many of these were “deaths of despair” from drug overdoses, suicide, and complications from alcoholism, but in 2018 it became clear that the least-educated middle-aged white women now had a higher risk of dying from cancer, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. The Forgotten Girls, which concerns the author’s relationship with Darci Brawner, her childhood friend, puts a human face on that research. The book, Potts’s “personal and emotional response” turns on “all the questions science . . . [can’t] answer.”

Monica and Darci grew up in poverty in the small, insular, and dying Arkansas town of Clinton—population: 2500–a bastion of evangelical Christianity and conservative politics, a place where the majority voted for Donald Trump in 2016. The girls met in primary school and were later placed in the gifted and talented class. Before their friendship began to fracture, the two shared a dream of getting out of Clinton and going to college together in California. They did not want to become teenage mothers or marry young, as so many Clinton girls did. Escaping the clutches of the church and the social ills of their birthplace was the goal. In the end, only Potts got away. It wasn’t to a school in California, but to Pennsylvania’s elite Bryn Mawr. After that, she pursued a career in journalism in New York and then in Washington DC, where she worked for The American Prospect, a progressive liberal magazine. Until 2015 when Darci contacted her through Facebook, Monica had little to no contact with her old friend.

Darci’s life trajectory was dramatically different from Monica’s. It was characterized by instability: mental-health issues; involvement with a violent man with whom she had two children; intractable addiction; significant legal problems (related to traffic, probation, and parole violations; drug charges; and embezzlement), as well as periods of incarceration. (Darci is clean now, but it remains to be seen how long this will last.) Potts examines multiple factors that shaped Darci’s and other female classmates’ unfortunate lives: the impact of evangelical Christianity—its stranglehold on southern communities and its exhortation that women accept the cross God had given them to bear; economic factors (poverty and lack of employment opportunities); crumbling physical and social infrastructure; familial dysfunction; intergenerational trauma . . . I could go on.

The author seems to want the reader to believe that she and Darcy were birds of a feather, that Darci’s story could have been hers:

I thought about my own life, and I realized that this was what still pinned Darci and me together, the essential thing we still had in common, a connected part of our being. We shared a desire for a messy life. We both had a fear of being too settled, of being trapped. Some people, maybe most people, find happiness in stability, a life contained in four walls and a roof, but Darci and I never had and never would. We’d always been different, and we’d been different together. We had the same unhealed wounds, and because of them, we could never be satisfied with being still. I had left Clinton and found constructive ways to channel that impulse. Darci stayed and tried to squeeze herself into its ill-fitting confines, and it had slowly destroyed her. Sometimes she would get high, she told me, and lie down in the middle of whatever busy road she was nearest. She wasn’t trying to commit suicide, she said. She did it because nothing stopped her. I’m not sure the world has ever figured out how to handle the Darcis who live in it. Our hometown definitely had not.

I found this a rather strange passage, having seen little evidence in the book of the author’s preference for messiness. In fact, Monica consistently shows herself trying to bring order to Darci’s life, first from afar, and then from Clinton itself. (For incomprehensible reasons, Monica moved back to the town with her partner a few years ago. She says she “felt at home,” which I find hard to believe.) Her initial decision to leave the Bible Belt for an education and wider horizons and her choosing not to marry or have children are a far cry from Darci’s addiction-fuelled impulsivity. And it’s quite a stretch to view a drug-addled Darci’s lying down in the middle of busy roads as sign of indomitability, not suicidality. Family tragedy haunts the author, yes, but to say her “unhealed wounds” are the same as her friend’s? I don’t think so. The two girls were fundamentally different in temperament. Potts didn’t become “boy crazy.” She was evidently more risk-averse, and she sensibly saw the value of rules. The couple of times that she and Darci snuck out as teens to attend late-night drunken parties left Monica feeling uncomfortable.

It’s true that the author’s family endured poverty, hardship, and tragedy, —Monica’s teenage sister, Ashley, who had been afflicted with severe Tourette’s Syndrome, died in a car crash; their dad, Billy, was an alcoholic, who died of lung cancer at age 55— but there were important differences between the Pottses and the Brawners. First of all, the Potts family remained intact. Darci’s parents, on the other hand, married and divorced twice, and her mother, Virginia, seemingly unable to manage without a man, went on to marry two more times. Virginia was religious and passive. More concerned about her relationship with the husband of the moment and greatly affected by her own traumatic childhood, she was willfully blind to her children’s problems. She refused to face down her difficult and aggressive daughter. No limits were set.

In contrast, Monica’s mother, Kathy, had escaped to Chicago until a personal tragedy brought her back to Clinton. She’d tasted enough freedom to want it for her daughters. The thought that they might remain in Clinton filled her with terror. Unlike Virginia, she was assertive and had rules. She was not religious: evangelical Christianity and conservative politics enraged her. It’s my view that the personal and familial factors exerted a stronger influence on the direction of the girls’ lives than social and cultural ones.

Potts’s analysis of the milieu in which the friends grew up is illuminating, but her progressive political bias is occasionally intrusive. The author’s assessment of the pandemic experience in Arkansas struck me as an especially unnuanced, simplistic, and uncritical recitation of the dominant narrative about vaccines (which are still, by the way, novel experimental products that have seriously harmed some) and face masks (whose effectiveness remains uncertain). Potts appears to believe that if more Arkansans had unselfishly followed public health guidance—i.e., “the science”™️—the mortality rate from Covid in the state would have been lower. The reality is that scientific debate was suppressed during the pandemic. The heads of the NIH and the NIAD were both involved in sidelining reputable scientists who had inconvenient perspectives. The Biden administration actively blacklisted from social media those physicians and epidemiologists with dissenting views. The term “misinformation” was bandied about and used to intimidate. So “the science” Potts refers to is a very politically flavoured variety. The deaths in rural America were likely due to a large number of factors, not the least of which is advanced age—rural America is notably older than urban America; comorbidities—particularly obesity, which is known to markedly increase mortality risk; lifestyle factors; and lack of access to health care and the medical resources of large cities. As Stanford physician and epidemiologist John Ioannidis points out: “It is likely that a very large number of factors may each contribute modest differences in mortality impact and cumulatively they may create more substantive differences.”

I realize I’ve ranted there, but my words speak to a problem I had with this book. I wish journalists would scratch below the surface, think critically, and bring greater objectivity to their work instead of toeing the political party line and spouting the same tired narrative about the pandemic. Potts can tell a good story—if you like train wrecks— but I didn’t always trust her interpretation and analysis. After reading the book, I have a clearer picture of life in the American south, but I can’t say Arkansas is a “whole nother world.” I see many of the same social problems—minus the deleterious effects of evangelical Christianity and white nationalism—in rural Ontario where I live. In the end, one thing niggles: why would Darci Brawner have even consented to having her story told? I could not shake the sense that there was something predatory about Potts’s holding up Darci’s case to the world. More details about what Darci understood about this project ought to have been provided.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced review copy.

Rating: 3.5

[Jenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

First off - Obviously this book contains a lot of expected triggers, but trigger warning also for death of a young person in a car accident. This was a really moving part of the book and, perhaps because I was so focused on the other heavy things I knew the book to be about, I wasn’t expecting it at all and it really caught me off guard, especially since the victim was an endearing and sympathetic young person and their story was compelling. I wanted to mention it as I know this may be a sensitive topic for some people who have experienced losses of this kind.

[PS: I almost wish the author would have written more, or even exclusively, about this person and their relationship. (I’m not naming the person because I want the story to unfold as conveyed so well in the book, but the person is not Darci.) Along with some of the parts about the author’s mother, this seemed like the most emotional and heartfelt part of the book to me and more effective and authentic than the parts about Darci. I think a really great and more genuine and connected (both personal and political) book could have been written about topics relevant to this person’s life, using their story and their relationship as a jumping off point instead of trying to take a tenuous childhood relationship with Darci and make a sweeping statement out of that.]

Moving on! - I agree with many reviewers that while parts of the writing were quite good and the author has a lot of potential, I don’t know that the book succeeds in illuminating its larger theme in an insightful and comprehensive way. The way in which Darci’s story was interwoven, at times maybe shoehorned, into the whole narrative felt a little forced and potentially appropriating, maybe just undercooked/unripe/too soon, as some have said.

I agree also that a tone seemingly a bit tinged with negative judgment and superiority somehow seeped through, even though I don’t think this was intended. But you still get the feeling that the author had this grand project and thesis in mind, but then maybe adult Darci didn’t quite give her the material she might have hoped to work with in crafting that project, and so it just all lands weirdly.

The author seems better able to integrate into her thesis examples of other young people she interviews and who had goals similar to the author, like a high-achieving high school student who, unlike the author, doesn’t get institutional, family, mentor, or other support in dealing with higher education decisions and processes and therefore ends up temporarily at a (gasp) community college rather than weighing the options of nearly full funding at either Barnard or Bryn Mawr, like the author did.

I hate to critique a book that deals with such important and emotional topics and experiences, but I think perhaps either if the author had not known Darci at all and had reported on her as a journalistic subject, OR she if knew her very, very well and their closeness was more enduring and/or recent, the book would have been way more successful.

As it is, it seemed like the author really didn’t know Darci well at all, and perhaps didn’t even really like her all that much, since childhood. (Sure, she describes Kindergarten and early elementary Darci as a pretty awesome kid, but aren’t most kids pretty awesome and easy to love?) Nor did they ever have too much in common, including many of their respective environmental risk factors and protective factors. (Sure, some they shared, but many they also did not, despite their shared hometown. Just for one instance, the author grows up in a robust culture of literacy, as evidenced by her childhood house full of books and fact that her mom remains engrossed in a e-reader to the present day, plus her mom also bought a secluded country home for the family specifically in an effort to provide a peaceful environment and a shelter from the loud stresses and influences of town.) Therefore, the author’s intimate use of Darci’s story and attempt to deploy Darci as some kind of symbol of “what I might have been had things gone wrong?” just didn’t sit super well with me. It seems disingenuous.

At some point after finishing the book, it also occurred to me that in a way, the “that could have been me” framework has the unfortunate effect of sounding like it’s talking about Darci as though she is dead already.

Finally, I also wanted to mention that above all, this really seems to be a book about impacts of trauma-related substance use disorder, and I wish it would have just focused more transparently or intentionally on this. The author’s hometown is rife with various risk factors for trauma and substance abuse, and the mental and physical health affliction of substance use disorder in turn generates ample risk factors for additional traumatic experiences as well. But ultimately, rather than the shortcomings of any college admissions advisor or anything like that, Darci’s substance use disorder, which seems to onset in her early-mid teens at latest, seems to be the primary factor responsible for creating the dramatic long-term contrasts between the author’s life and Darci’s (and who’s counting? - but the author is).

I think the author reluctantly skirts with acknowledging this in the end, but it felt like a little too late, a little brushed off, and the author seems somewhat hopeless, frustrated and annoyed about it all. It almost seems as though the author is less sympathetic about this admittedly challenging topic, or maybe just less interested in discussion, analysis, or problem-solving around it as compared to, say, systemic educational inequities, but again - Darci’s reality should hold primacy, not the author’s goals or interests, if Darci is to be the subject here.

[Jeffrey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Want to thank Random House and NetGallery for the ARC for my honest review. There’s just a ton of issues with this book. It never actually tries to get of the bottom of anything. It shoves it off as religion, men and white people are bad. It’s never the actual person’s fault who actually made the decisions. Maybe Monica was too close to the story. Maybe she just wanted to make excuses. I don’t know. But this is a book I’d skip.

To sum up this review in on word, it’d be wow and it’s not a good wow. I read a ton of nonfiction but just found this book very dull and boring. I read every page of the first 30% of the book and then I started skipping paragraphs. My thoughts on the content:

“I heard, at lease once, a lesson about the need to trust fully in God’s plan, to give one’s life up to God” – Pg 53
That’s kinda how religion works. Same could be said for any religion out there. Why else would you believe in a God?

“People went to churches that preached heaven as the ultimate reward for people who were personally pious and Christian and repentant; earth was just a temporary place.” - Pg 54
Yeah…that’s kinda what Christianity/religion is about. Again, same applies to every religion. Your end goals is to reap the rewords of said religion.

“This philosophy conveniently absolves people who are better off—financially and materially—from trying to help those in need” - Pg 54
This is completely unbiblical. There’s tons of verses talking about giving and charity.

Acts 20:35 In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

Hebrews 13:16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

Proverbs 19:17 Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed.

Luke 21:1-4 Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

1 John 3:17 But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him

“men and women had natural, God-given roles that were fundamentally different.” - Pg 55
Yep…not sure why this is considered bad. News flash..men and women are different.

“To counter feminist rhetoric, both male and female evangelical teachers asserted that the only thing that makes women truly happy is submission to their husbands and to the natural order. Straying from that ideal is the cause of every unhappiness. Marie Griffith, a religious scholar at Washington University in St. Louis, has found that evangelical women’s groups explicitly tell a woman that if her husband, or some other male authority figure, is making her unhappy, all she needs to do is pray and return to the Lord, and then she will find that her husband has been a loving, good man all along and that her unhappiness was all in her own head.” - Pg 55
I’ve never heard a single person ever say this. Nor have I ever heard anyone tell a woman “all she needs to do is pray and return to the Lord” This is the definition of gaslighting.

"It sets up woman’s role as one of constant sacrifice and martyrdom. Religious communities intend for women to pray for everything, not to have the power to make decisions for themselves or for their communities." - Pg 56
Again…completely wrong. Men are intended to pray just as much if not more then women. Nor do women not have power to make decisions. Wife's are to submit to husbands as husbands are to submit to God. Husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. Biblically we are to submit ourselves to one another in fear of God. He that loves his wife, loves hismself. It's not a master and slave relationship, it's a guide and follower relationship. The husband is to love his wife above all other human beings. The bible doesn’t give free rain to rule women.

“and 58 percent of those who responded said that a candidate’s stance on issues mattered most.” - Pg 58
And what exactly is someone suppose to vote for a candidate based on? Their favorite football team? What college they went to? The same applies to both sides of the street. Democrats and liberals won’t vote for Repulicans because of their stance on issues.

“What do I or any of us owe to the people we leave behind? For the well-being of my own soul, I needed to know: Did I have anything to atone for, and if so, what and how much?” - - Pg 65
Nothing…they are adults and make their own decisions.

“She lamented in her diary that she rarely got to spend time with her friend anymore because the friend always had her baby and her boyfriend in tow” - Pg 66
Yeah…that’s kinda what happens when you become adult have adult responsibilities
“This circle is the microscopic holes in a condom,” he said. “They’re microscopic, and that means they’re tiny. But guess what’s even tinier?” he asked, pointing his chalk at the white dot on the green board. “AIDS. That’s the AIDS virus, and it can get through those holes, and it will kill you. So the only way to not get AIDS is to not have sex.” - Pg 68
So…you remember this quote…word for word?!?

“The message at church was that we had to keep ourselves pure for our husbands” - Pg 68
As the exact same message was or should have been told to the boys. The bible doesn’t give free reign for boys/men to be little devils while forcing women to “keep pure”

“A 2017 study in the Journal of Adolescent Health concluded that promoting abstinence-only sex education is medically unethical and harms young people because it does not give them the tools to properly navigate their budding sexuality, or to prevent sexually transmitted infections or pregnancy.” - Pg 68
“Medically unethical” lol and what tools does it not give? It’s pretty simple really, if you don’t want to chance a pregnancy…don’t have sex. Weird how biology works.

“When girls don’t act in the ways they’re expected to or when they are perceived to be acting out, they’re punished.” - Pg 92
And if you are a good parent, you’d do the same to boys who act out. It’s called parenting.

“Receptionists … don’t make the money men do.” - Pg 117
They do if compared to men receptionists. Now do receptions make the same as men in coal mines? Of course not. But I don’t make as much as an MLB player either…is that wrong?

“They let God decide their fates.”- Pg 176
No…their decisions decided their fates. We have free will.

“what kept them from feeling that they were at the very bottom was the color of their skin.” - Pg 181
Never heard anyone say “Damn I’m poor and can’t afford to pay for the house or car or feed my family. I’m being sued by everyone I owe money to but thank God I’m White!” This sentence explains this book perfectly.

“They feel they are entitled to some measure of security and comfort based on their whiteness”- Pg 181
Uh…whiskey tango foxtrot?!!? Is this the dumbest thing I read in 2022.

“Other people told me that they’d seen her be abusive, both verbally and physically, to George as well. This is something people commonly say about domestic abuse victims, a way to deflect responsibility from the men, and it’s hard to assess the truth of it.” - Pg 188
So…obviously the people saying this were lying..right? Because as we know…it’s always the man’s fault for everything.

“women falling on bad times because men have control over them” - Pg 189
You mean…making bad decisions?

“They felt sorry for her children for having to deal with that. No one ever seemed to regret Darci’s troubles for her own sake.” - Pg 203
Because ones an adult that can make their own choices. They have free will and can consent. One’s a child that cannot. The child is at the mercy of their caretaker.

“I knew she missed her family, but she’d been at home and safe with her kids before she’d messed it up, so I blamed her a bit.” - Pg 211
You blamed her…just a bit?!?!

“They saw it solely as a matter of personal choice when, in reality, masks and vaccines were also meant to protect the people around us”- Pg 229
You spend the whole book talking about what a shit hole small town this place was…and then you expect the people there to treat covid the same as NYC? They shouldn’t be expected to. There are probably more people in 1 mile in NYC than Clinton. If you are in a highly populated area, it should handle things like Covid vastly different then wide-open small towns like Clinton.

“Later, when Kyle Rittenhouse was arrested and charged with murdering protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Clinton celebrated him as a hero, for doing what he had to do to protect property.” - Pg 230
Again..nice gaslighting. Noticed you forgot to mention he was found not guilty of all charges. And he wasn’t “protecting property” when he shot them. He was protecting himself form a skateboard and a handgun. But don’t let facts get in the way of a story..right?

“They support presidents and senators and policies that would close the borders, cut taxes to nothing, and pass initiatives preventing schools from teaching about racism accurately.” - Pg 231
Poor people want taxes cut? Breaking news at 10. And another nice gaslighting remark about teaching “racism accurately”. Which nobody has a issue with. You mean teaching the 1619 project that already had to corrected once and that multiple historians have discredited?



Moral of the book is. Men are bad. Religion is bad. Clinton is bad. All bad decisions in a woman's life is because of a man.

[Bonnie G. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping this would be a response to the right wing bootstraps propaganda that was Hillbilly Elegy, but it was not that. I think it was intended to make educated urban people want to provide supports for rural Americans who are in crisis, If anything it made me less sympathetic to the needs of rural Americans than I was going in.

Potts tries to tell the story of what is wrong with rural America through the life of her childhood best friend, Darci. They were both smart girls who dreamed of getting out of their insular Arkansas town. Potts did but Darci decided (unprotected) sex, drugs and country tunes were more important than a better future and Potts kept her eyes on the prize heading to Bryn Mawr, then NYC and DC before inexplicably moving back to the craphole she was trying to escape in the first place. There she spends an inordinate amount of time chasing after Darci, now living the glam life of a rural Arkansas addict

Darci needs friends but not friends like Potts who makes her the face of laziness, narcissism (well DJT and Elon Musk hold that crown, but we will say she if the face of backwoods narcissism), addiction and complete failure. She also encourages Darci's worst behaviors by herself being the face of co-depencency. Potts devotes her life to finding excuses why Darci is not responsible for her consistently lousy choices. Darci decides not to go to classes because she can get good enough grades without attending. She cannot graduate because she did not meet the minimum number of attendance hours mandated by the state. Somehow Potts sees this is the fault of the school and of Darci's mother (who is actually a victim of circumstance and geography, and would have been a much better central figure than the pathetic yet still despicable Darci.) Darci shacks up with a man she knows to be violent and a convicted felon because he provides access to drugs. She has children with him, she quits working choosing to be completely dependent on this man, and when he is abusive and commits crimes and she is trapped, To Potts Darci is just a victim (I am not saying she is responsible for her husband's abuse. He is 100% responsible. Still she knew he was abusive when she went into the relationship, and that he was a criminal and she went anyway. That was her choice and it was a bad one. She knew by choosing to quit her job and be fully financially dependent she was closing the door on being able to leave since she had no other source of income, and she chose that path anyway. Her choice, and she made it.) Darci is given access to long term treatment at two good rehab facilities on the government dime and she gets herself thrown out of both. She is sentenced to jail time because she decides to stop reporting to her probation officer. Somehow Potts sees all these choiced Darci made as not being Darci's fault. Darci sends her kids to live with her mother while in prison, and then just decides to not do the necessary work to regain custody so she can do drugs without distraction. Yes, Darci is a victim of the ignorance and self-serving behavior that is endemic to places like the one she and Potts grew up in, but she is also a person who (unlike many) had opportunities. She got scholarships to universities in Florida and Arkansa, free rehab and inpatient psychiatric care, etc -- and she worked the system and then bled it dry. When she did that, took money for school and spent it on drugs instead and used rehab as a place to crash rather than trying to get well she stole money, money that could have gone to people who were not selfish and lazy. Other poor people could have gone to school. She stole much needed bedspace in rehabs that take Medicaid when those beds could have gone to people ready to do the work. She stole from friends and family, disregarded the needs of people who tried to show her kindness, and let her children believe they were not worth her attention. She may be, as Potts posits, headed for a death of despair, but she is also chose to have two children and force them into a life of despair. She is a deceitful, selfish, cruel person who was given chances on the government dime and she flipped off every one of us who pays taxes. (She was doing this even before he was an addict, but certainly it got worse with her addiction as one would expect.) She makes a bad example for the argument that we need to invest more to help people like her and make sure rural kids know there are ways to escape the quicksand of the places they are from. I actually believe at least some of what Potts believes, but she herself says that the people she wants to help don't want help. They want to just rely on God, they want to own their land and shoot their guns and not get vaccinated, and some want to drink and do drugs all day. When she tells this story what is Potts trying to accomplish? She says she wants us to reckon with the disparity between urban and rural America, but she also tells us rural Americans don't want our help. And I don't understand why Potts chases after Darci, who expresses no real interest in her life and offers nothing to her. At the end Potts says she wanted Darci to ask about her (Potts') life but she never did, she just talked about herself. She was consistently, ceaselessly selfish, yet Potts worked very hard to maintain their relationship, In this way Darci does seem like a real representative of all the rural Arkansans featured here, and somehow Potts thinks the rest of us want a part of this one sided relationship with no payoff. Baffling. Secession looked better with every moment I spent reading this.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look at small town rural America and what happens to its residents when there are no jobs, little hope, much poverty, and too many drugs. This is a memoir of the friendship between 2 girls who both dreamed of getting out of their small town but only one managed it.

I am a bit bothered by this story and not completely sure why. The author seems to be very judgmental of the town and its occupants and rarely even comes back to visit as a young adult, yet she (without explanation) moves back. She reminds the reader fairly often that she is a smart, high-achieving woman which seems unnecessarily repeated. She is chronicling the life of her childhood friend but it seems more like she is using her for a story than looking for answers and ways to help her. It is a sad book with few insights into the why or what to do.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC to read and review.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first saw this book mentioned in an Atlantic article I couldn’t read because it was behind a paywall. So, I put it on hold at the library as soon as it was published because it’s a memoir by an author who spent her childhood trying to escape rural Arkansas, as I worked to escape rural Alabama. I’m not sure what I was looking for here — mainly just a shared experience and some stats perhaps. I completely get her sentiments: “I was going to leave this stupid town and its stupid rocky soil where nothing grew and where children were buried; its stupid churches and hypocritical Holy Rollers; its stupid schools and the principal who, I thought, had kicked my best friend out of school; its poverty and its poverty of imagination; its low expectations; its girls who were expected to wear makeup and curl their hair and marry so young and produce an endless supply of babies; its stupid selective mourning, this stupid town that cared more about people who died than those who lived and struggled and couldn’t find their way.”

Beyond being a situation I could relate to, it was also a glimpse into what could have happened if she stayed in Clinton, Arkansas, instead of going away to college. Her honor roll best friend stayed behind and ended up living a life full of hard drugs, bad relationships, losing custody of her kids, and prison time. You look at people who had their futures ahead of them make a couple of mistakes and think, “There but for the luck of a few choices go I.”

She talks about how some people leave and return to their small towns because “They were unprepared, or unwilling, to mingle with people who didn’t look like them or who had different belief systems and backgrounds. … It’s no surprise, then, that the people who stay in, or return to, small hometowns tend to be more conservative, both politically and socially. … This points to a feedback loop for the insular, small-town dynamic: the people who think their small towns are the best often haven’t lived far away for a significant period of time and so don’t have a solid basis for comparison.”

The author tries to get at the heart of what goes wrong in small towns like this. She said that her best friend “went through the regular teenage agony that most girls experience at that age, but in our case it was influenced by our hometown’s religious judgments and expectations. … People who tried to break the pattern were often alone, set against the larger forces of small-town thinking and small-town gossip.”

Another problem the author highlights in small-town life is the Biblical idea of wives “submitting to their husbands.” She says that “it means that women are to endure suffering, not solve it or complain about it. It sets up a woman’s role as one of constant sacrifice and martyrdom.”

What really got me was that, after working so hard to escape rural Arkansas, the author and her husband return from New York to live in her hometown by the end of the book. It’s a town lacking infrastructure and full of all the problems she talks about in her book. Yet, she goes back to live? That’s my worst nightmare — ending up moving back to rural America. The older I get, the more I miss the social and familial safety net of living around family. But I don’t miss the judgment, gossip, and being the odd person out in a community that doesn’t think anything like I do.

I’m having a hard time deciding how to rate this book because it took a long time to read. It certainly reinforced the way I feel about why I had to leave rural America. It also gave me insight into living in rural Arkansas. I currently live in suburban Arkansas outside of a college town (following my husband’s job), but it’s a completely different experience in that I can find like-minded people here and it’s not a place where I fear my teen daughter will end up pregnant and on drugs for lack of anything better to do. It feels odd that the author’s best friend would allow her to write such a candid portrayal of the train wreck of her life. It kind of feels like I’m looking where I don’t belong. There’s a part of my brain that wants to sit in judgment of her choices and another part that hates the mindsets and systems that put her there. Life is rarely black and white.

[Shannon Hill · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author states at the beginning of the book how much she hated the small town of Clinton and how she couldn't wait to escape it. That alone should tell the reader that anything they're about to read is biased - no matter how many statistics she throws in. As a side note on the statistics part, given enough time, anyone could find a statistic or report to support whatever theory they're trying to pass on as true.

I was a resident of Clinton from 1997 to 1999 and graduated in the class after Monica and the same class that Ashley was apart of. I had moved to the small town from Conway the summer before my Junior year. For that reason alone, I wasn't the biggest fan of the town. However, it's like most small towns across the South. Yes, the South is full of Bible Belt areas where it's citizens are like minded church goers. It's true that most of the residents aren't educated because there aren't higher education opportunities unless one were to take classes online and in Rural America broadband isn't something that exists in most of those areas.

As far as meth, I never saw it while I was a resident there, but I also never attended parties where others were smoking pot. Maybe it's because I grew up in a much stricter house than Monica and Darci or maybe it was because I was working nights and weekends at the local McDonald's and Huddle House trying to save up enough money to make sure I made it to college. Whatever the case may be, I wasn't around drugs in Clinton and was not under the impression that they were readily available on every street corner like the author portrays.

As far as evangelical Christian views, Trump supporters, and the like, again Arkansas is apart of the Bible Belt and yes, most of the state identifies as Republican. It's apparent that the author is neither of those and feels strongly about people who are. To that, I'd like to say that it's sad that she wasted an opportunity to write a truly great book, by using her platform to bash those who believe differently than her. I had high hopes for this book, but in the end, it's just a book written by someone not accepting of others and their lifestyles when it looks so differently than hers.

As far as the main person of the story, Darci, I believe it's sad that she's fallen on such hard times, but I believe she's responsible by how her life turned out. It's true that she may not have had the supportive family system that others had, but she was given the ability to say no to drugs and partying and she chose not to. Do I believe that the City of Clinton is responsible for how her life turned out, like the author suggests? Absolutely not. Like it is mentioned in the book, there are others who live in the town and have made successful lives of their own. There are peers of mine that have returned to town after college and are teachers, accountants, lawyers, doctors, and small business owners. They did not let where they live limit their potential and they don't see the town as horrific as the author.

I'll end this long winded review with one last thought. If the author hated Clinton so much, then why on Earth did she choose to return there? If the town is full of people she hates and there are no opportunities there except for drugs, then why return? If she is so much above its people in superiority, which she definitely believes, why live there? Why not go back to NY? I'm sure that after this book, the people of Clinton aren't her biggest supporters. I'd also venture that the people she quoted in this book, mainly Darci, isn't a huge fan of the book she's written. Best Friend? She exploited her friend. If that's what you call a Best Friend, then I'd hate to know how she treats her enemies.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

In his classic historical text The Making of the English Working Class (1963), EP Thompson famously argued that the rise of Methodism from the eighteenth century onwards represented a 'chiliasm of despair': it allowed working-class people to accept their subordination to industrial capitalism by encouraging them to focus on the promised life beyond death. Historians have since challenged Thompson's interpretation, pointing out that Methodism fostered vibrant community life and could actually be linked to political radicalism, not passive acceptance of one's lot. However, I couldn't help thinking of the 'chiliasm of despair' when I read the opening of Monica Potts's The Forgotten Girls, which seeks to understand why life expectancy declined so rapidly for the least educated white Americans, especially white women, between 2014 and 2017. As Potts tells us, the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton attribute these early deaths to drug overdoses, suicides and alcoholism. They call them 'deaths of despair'.

Like Thompson, Potts argues that despair is closely linked to evangelical religion. 'In some ways, Christians have been waiting two thousand years for the world to end,' she says, writing of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in her rural Arkansas hometown of Clinton, although the biggest religious group there were the Southern Baptists, another evangelical denomination. 'Poor white people with the least education, who live in areas with high concentrations of evangelical Protestants, are the ones who are dying young', Potts argues. But are apocalyptic beliefs cause or consequence of these difficult lives? Potts comes down, mostly, on the side of cause: 'People went to churches that preached heaven as the ultimate reward... earth was just a temporary place... If that's the case, why struggle to make the world better? Better to concentrate on one's faith... the responsibility to escape into heaven belongs to each individual person.' Potts blames evangelical Christianity for structural misogyny, a lack of community, and a focus on blaming the individual rather than thinking about wider social problems.

Like the 'chiliasm of despair' chapter in The Making of the English Working Class, this kind of explanation is seductive, especially if you're not religious or belong to a very different kind of faith. But are things really this simple? Potts suggests she wants to complicate these sociological narratives by telling the story of two girls: herself, and her best friend Darci. Both grew up in Clinton in the 1980s and 1990s, and came from very similar socio-economic backgrounds, but they ended up taking very different paths. Potts ended up getting her degree from Bryn Mawr and is now a senior politics reporter at FiveThirtyEight; Darci lost custody of her two children to her mother and cycled through a series of spells in prison because of her drug addictions. Both girls were desperate to get out of Clinton as teenagers, but while Potts has lived in DC and New York, Darci never moved more than fifteen minutes from the town.

For me, the problem is that Darci's story doesn't really change the narrative that Potts presents us with at the very start of this book. Often it seems that she's just using Darci as an example of the wider trends she's observed rather than really embracing her complexity as a human being. While I wouldn't deny the harmful impact of this kind of evangelical Christianity alongside the generational poverty experienced by rural Americans, The Forgotten Girls sometimes seems to be preaching that there's only one right way to live: get your high school diploma, go to college, get out, and make sure you don't have kids until your thirties. Potts touches on the reasons that people don't want to leave their rural communities - the need to support their families, the ties of land, the value and status that women receive when they become mothers early - but she ultimately says little about this. There's a sense that we just need to work out how to keep girls like Darci in education, and everything will be OK. Having gone to a school where many of my classmates rejected formal education for very sensible reasons - and where some of them ended up becoming teenage mothers - I don't think it's that easy.

The missing story in The Forgotten Girls is not only Darci's but Monica's. Potts tells us a bit about her life when she was still a teenager in Clinton, but once she leaves, she vanishes from the book, becoming the observing sociologist rather than the subject. This not only feels unfair on Darci but shortchanges the reader. We need to know how Monica has lived her life, as well. Why does she choose to return to live in Clinton in the end? What draws her back? Instead, The Forgotten Girls tells us an all-too-familiar story about rural poverty, and never really plumbs the depths.

I received a free proof copy of this book from the publisher for review.

[🩶 April • A.M. Flynn • 🩶 · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. I am also from Arkansas but this memoir just started sounding more informative of the area and really did not get into her own life so I had to just stop.

[Peacegal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Growing up in rural Arkansas, Monica and Darci were best friends; two academic high achievers who vowed to escape their insular community with its downward spiral of depression, poverty, and ignorance. Only one succeeded. The other became mired in a tragic cycle of addiction, incarceration, and homelessness. What happened?

THE FORGOTTEN GIRLS shifts from telling two individuals’ stories into a macro view of Appalachia, where lifespans, especially those of white women, have taken a noticeable decline. Yes, these communities are awash in unhealthy choices—and health care has priced out so many Americans that many simply forgo it until it’s too late.

Meanwhile, it doesn’t take a political science degree to see how rural America has either embraced politics that destroy them (but give them a convenient "other" to hate), or are so disillusioned by their constant misery that they opt out of voting or learning about the political world at all, as Darci has done.

Monica’s and Darci’s experiences diverged especially as the girls approached college age. Monica became laser-focused on getting the scholarships necessary to attend a well-regarded, out-of-state institution that would help her launch a journalism career. Darci, meanwhile, stumbled through risky choices and bad relationships.

GIRLS, like many books of this type, suffers from an idealized view of higher education as the panacea to society’s ills. College is not everyone’s way out. Many students from poor areas end up attending small state or community colleges that offer little by way of diversity or significant shifts in environment. A college degree can make it easier to find employment, but not necessarily at livable wages—there are plenty of college graduates struggling in the customer service sector. Not everyone has the finances or ability to move to a more well-off area.

Sometimes, the work itself contributes to employees’ hardships. GIRLS mentions multiple times that the major employer in her town growing up was a chicken slaughter plant. The author doesn’t delve into this, but slaughterhouse work is dangerous, both in terms of physical injury and psychological damage. Regarding the latter, those individuals who spend their days handling and killing living animals are most at risk of becoming mired in violence and addiction in their dealings outside of work. This type of employment is no boon to small communities.

The author is right around my age, and so much of this book rang true to me. It made me think about girls I knew growing up and wondering what became of some of them. THE FORGOTTEN GIRLS is a bracing, important read, especially for those who wonder how small town and rural America became such a toxic place, in every sense of the word.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grew up in a rural area a few decades before the author did in the Arkansas Ozarks. It doesn't sound like much has changed and, if anything, has gotten worse. The author moved away to college and only returned to write her book, which I enjoyed reading. Her friend Darci gets the most attention in the story. Meth and opioids are the most evil curses. Hate them. Anyway, if you like memoirs with a rural setting, this one might be in your wheelhouse.

[Judy Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America by acclaimed journalist Monica Potts is a meticulously researched, haunting, insightful, yet sad account of lives lost in poverty that some cannot escape.

Potts expertly explores her life and how she escaped the limitations of a rural childhood; however, on the other hand, her friend did not, falling further into poverty, substance abuse, drugs, and despair.

The author wanted to understand why poor, uneducated white women were dying at higher rates than others. She returned to her Ozark hometown to live and work.

What was killing them? Study after study showed opiates, suicide, methamphetamines, smoking, etc. Why did drugs like meth take over in some places but not others? Why would painkillers kill poor, uneducated white people more than other groups?

Why did the rate of suicide rise and spread in rural areas faster than elsewhere? None of these questions had simple answers, but in trying to answer them, it took the author's past research into the circumstances, accidents, and personal choices that fill and shape our lives.

She was looking for one person: her friend, Darci. When Monica left home at age eighteen, Darci was kicked out of high school weeks before graduation. Before Monica left for college, they said their goodbyes at a funeral.

Two young girls with dreams. They both wanted careers. They wanted to be rich and famous. They wanted to be far away from Clinton. Nothing would stop them.

Monica could not wait to leave Clinton and the people in it. She tried not to think about the people she loved and the life she left behind. Darci's life had not gone as she had hoped.

When Monica finally did go back, she realized that her investigation would turn on all the questions science could not answer. What her best friend's life had been like after she left, and how she ended up in a trailer on top of Bee Branch Mountain.

We learn about their reconnection in 2015, and Monica did not realize how personal and emotional the journey would become. From layers of long-buried grief and pain of watching a loved one fall apart.

We see the girls as young children with much promise, and the exploration of the years after that took them apart. She would find the answers to those questions in the space that had grown between them.

Darci grew up with a mother who did not set boundaries.

Monica, on the other hand, had stricter rules and more grounded parents. The Potts family made their daughter's success a focus and moved them out of town to keep them away from the boys, drugs, and other things which prevented a good education. After that, a summer program and an elite college.

Whereas Darci became pregnant. Then a slow descent into drugs and alcohol forced her to drop out of school, spiraling downward into poverty, mental illness, domestic abuse, and incarceration.

The two girls/now women who were childhood friends found themselves in different lives with different outcomes.

Written with compassion and sensitivity, an illuminating, thought-provoking, and engrossing portrait of the hopelessness we find across America in rural areas.

Well-researched, with extensive interviews with friends and family, a critical, insightful, beautifully written, and deeply affecting memoir. I enjoyed reading the updates from 2019-2022 from these BFFs and what being best friends mean.

"That grief, and the larger, shared understanding of growing up where we had and wanting to get out, would always fill whatever space might grow between us."

For readers who enjoyed Matthew Desmond's EVICTED and POVERTY BY AMERICA.

Thanks to #RandomHouse for the invitation to read an ARC via #NetGalley for review purposes. #RandomHouseInfluencers

Blog Review Posted @
JudithDCollins.com
@JudithDCollins | #JDCMustReadBooks
My Rating: 5 Stars
Pub Date: May 30, 2023
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[Shelby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really struck a chord with me. The author's description of her father's (young, poor) rural health outcomes felt like a mirror being held up to my own family. It is a lonely experience to worry about a parent's health, and my shared experience with the author felt comforting and healing.

[JL · Rating 5 out of 5]

#GoodreadsGiveaway Thank you, Random House for an advance uncorrected proof.

Wow! This is an extraordinary book! Heartbreaking, personal, empathetic, incisive, well-researched, well-written, and current. It works so well as both a memoir and an analysis of the forces at work in rural, impoverished, Bible-Belt America. There is so much to this book. I've learned a lot from it, including that there is so much more for me to learn. I can't stop thinking about it and talking about it. I find myself thinking differently about the people in the small town I grew up in and the one where I live now.

I sure wish I'd read something like this book in my studies in sociology and social work. The author tells a highly personal story, centered on herself and her best friend growing up in a small town in the Arkansas Ozarks, and the lingering question: why did their lives take such different trajectories? And why, overall, is the life expectancy of rural White women on the decline? The answer is very complicated indeed, and though she consults many expert sources on the challenges facing residents of rural communities, she does not veer into becoming prescriptive. She has walked a fine line--successfully, I think-- writing a story that is full of heart, yet also includes analysis of the consequences of the intersection of religion, economic hardship, teen pregnancy, addiction, domestic abuse, disease, and the revolving door of involvement with the criminal justice system and repeated stays in treatment programs, trying mightily to leave her bias at the door. As a journalist and as a friend, she just keeps asking questions, and as a result, her very personal story achieves a universality that can speak to rural communities throughout the country.

This book will stay with me for some time. I may well have already discovered one of my future nominees for my online bookclub's 2024 line-up (I'll have to get a copy of the final edition so we're all on the same page!). There is so much to discuss. Kudos to Monica Potts for writing an important and memorable book.

[JoAnne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I never write reviews but felt like I should give some context if I give a book less than 4 stars. I felt like this book stated opinions as if they were facts and tried to oversimplify complex social issues. I just read Demon Copperhead which addressed the same issues much better. I think that this type of stereotyping individuals unfortunately is contributing to the division between urban and rural societies I grew up in a rural community, went to college in a large city and never returned, so I get what she was trying to do but this well meaning patronization of rural culture is honestly offensive. She had the opportunity to help bridge the divide between the two societies but instead she just used this platform as a way for her to vent about all the reasons she thinks her small town failed her and her friend with absolutely nothing to back it up except speculation and conjecture masquerading as facts in her view.

[Irene Well Worth A Read]

DNF at 10%
This is supposed to be a memoir. There's no heart or soul or emotion. Numbers and statistics bore me. I think we already know that people who live below the poverty line are less likely to graduate college and more likely to die before the average life expectancy. I don't need to read the statistics over and over. I was looking for a memoir not an analysis of the numbers.

[Maria Guy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible. Didn’t finish it. Sadly I got bored of the patronising tone of the ‘gifted’ writer. Lacked any profound introspection or reflection. Much better books out there that cover the subjects with more care and consideration and less arrogance.

[Lissa00 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Digital Advanced Review Copy received from the Publisher via NetGalley.

4.5 stars. The author, Monica Potts, grew up in the small, rural community of Clinton, Arkansas with her best friend Darci who she shared a desire to get far away from their home town. While the author was able to attend a college far away from Clinton, Darci stuck around and spiraled into a desperate life of poverty, drugs and small crime. This is part memoir and part Sociological examination of one rural town and the factors that keep women in repeating cycles of poverty. I found a lot to relate to in this book. The author and I were born in the same year and I witnessed similar aspects of rural life in southern Indiana so scenes from the author’s childhood felt very reminiscent. Incredibly well written, this book does a really good job of personalizing some of the same issues in rural America that other writer’s have tried to explain in less impactful ways. I felt this book had clear-sighted observations and a good mix of memoir and social commentary.

[Carla (Carla's Book Bits) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, The Forgotten Girls was not the book I was expecting it to be.

I think I really wanted this book to read more like a memoir, with lots of introspection and emotion. Instead, what we get here is a factual breakdown of why these women in the Ozarks have such low life expectancies. I give the author some credit, she examines this issue through the lens of her friendship with a woman named Darci, who succumbs to what's basically the systemic failures affecting this community. But still, that never stopped this book from reading (for me) like a sociological essay rather than something that affects the author personally.

I also struggled with how removed the writing style seemed to be. I never felt like the writing ever pierced my heart like I wanted it to. Sadly, not a read I expected, and not one that I loved. But you may have better luck if you know what you're getting into before picking this up.

Disclaimer: I received a free e-copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Steinbeck, · Rating 2 out of 5]

This had potential, but the author makes excuses at every turn for the poor outcomes in rural America and for her friend. Thirty minutes was too far to drive for college and it was boring?! Boo hoo! Lack of education, fundamentalism, small mindedness, addiction, etc. This is not rocket science or new information. If small towns are so great, then why did you leave?

[Lydia Omodara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America is an ambitious book. Author Monica Potts revisits the years she spent growing up in rural Arkansas, and ponders why she was able to move away and build a successful life while her childhood best friend, Darci, who stayed behind, fell into a hole of poverty, unemployment, addiction and mental health struggles. From here Potts sets out to extrapolate an explanation as to why white women from poor, rural towns in the south are more likely to succumb to so-called deaths of despair - caused by suicide, drug addiction and alcoholism. Part memoir, part social commentary, and part history, The Forgotten Girls is a fascinating book which expertly weaves the author's own experiences and those of her friends and neighbours, with meticulous research to create a compelling, heartbreaking narrative.

“For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come,” reads Hebrews 13:14. The verse, which the author references in the text, refers to the Christian belief that life on Earth is merely a stop-gap on the way to heaven, but it works nicely as an allegory for the ultimate question of The Forgotten Girls. The author tells how she always felt that, for her, settling down in her poor, rural southern hometown was not an option she could countenance. She wanted to graduate high school, go to college out of state, and have a big life in a far-off city. But for so many of her contemporaries, the assumption was that they would marry young, with probably no more than a high school education, if that, raise their children, go to church, and work the same jobs their parents had. For far too many women in towns like Clinton, Arkansas, this choice (and Potts argues convincingly that it cannot really be considered a choice) leads to a life of misery, poverty, addiction and early death. This book explores the myriad factors that might explain why this is the default for so many, those whom - unlike Monica Potts - always knew that they would make their permanent home where they were born, and for whom looking forward to a home yet to come was just a fanciful, unrealised dream - if it even occurred to them at all.

Potts demands to know why women in particular are dying younger than they had been a generation before, and why people in towns like Clinton are more vulnerable to drug addiction, alcoholism and mental health problems. Her exploration of the factors which might account for this tragic trend is comprehensive and far-reaching: the boundaries parents are or are not willing to enforcement, and the aspirations they have, or do not have, for their daughters, and the role transgenerational trauma plays in all of this; the church, purity culture and the expectation, enforced in all areas of society, that women should desire nothing more than a life of submission and servitude; generational poverty dating back to pioneer times, limited employment opportunities; ill-fated relationships driven by the need for money, shelter, security, or the need to preserve reputation.

The Forgotten Girls is the most interesting non-fiction book I've read in a long time, and has inspired me to read more widely on this subject - I found myself noting down several of the books referenced. I look forward to reading more by this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Press UK for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this book.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up.
It's kind of ironic that I gave up on my audio book listen of Demon Copperhead, a tale of misery, abuse, and addiction in rural Appalachia, because it was so brutally depressing, only to pick up this memoir, more less about the same subject, but taking place in the Ozarks. As explanation I can offer these possibilities, or some combination of them: 1) I'm often more drawn to memoirs than to fiction 2) We know at the outset that the author herself escaped being trapped in a cycle of poverty, even though her friend didn't 3) The story has personal resonance for me, despite my not having grown up in a small economically struggling town, and last but definitely not least, this book is about 1/4 the length of Demon Copperfield.

Note to self: this is the first audiobook I've listened to using the Libby app, as opposed to buying it with an Audible membership (or checking a CD box set out of the library, something I haven't done in many, many, years, although that was how I started my audio listening journey).

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! This kept me reading. I know this was labeled as a memoir, but I loved all the background information and data that went into this book. I didn't group up in a small town, so getting an understanding of what life is like in a small southern town was fascinating. Hearing Darci and Monica's story was truly so interesting to me. A must read.

[Cris · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was interested in this book because I too grew up up in a small (smaller than Clinton) Arkansas town. I almost stopped when I realized the authors negative view of religion. I pushed through because I did understand how those views may occur and wanted to know more of the circumstances that created this opinion. Sadly, she was never open to Christianity, as her world view is elitist and liberal. She never explored the lives of anyone who professed Christianity, only deciding without asking that they were hiding abuse.

The author explained in detail the differences in their families, but never acknowledged the glaring fact that made her and her friend’s, who is the subject of the book, life choices different. It was the differences in discipline by both sets of parents. She never gave statistics about children growing up in broken homes with little to no discipline compared to those, like herself, that grew up in families that stayed together and had expectations of their children. She gave every other statistic about rural communities not banding together and caring for their citizens, but that she failed to mention this at least once leaves the book with a glaring hole, and made it disingenuous at best. This book was unfortunately a one sided bashing of conservative values. I gave it a chance because I wanted to learn her view, however, she never gave any indication that she tried to understand the opposing view.

The book was readable about three quarters of the way through, when it became a mash up of statistics and dates that weren’t in coherent order. I had unfortunately recommended this book to two others before completing so they might understand my background further. I am embarrassed about that and can only hope they don’t pick it up.

Sadly, the events the author writes about are events that are repeated daily throughout rural Arkansas. I’m sad that the telling was just an excuse to blame government for not encroaching on peoples lives to make them ‘better’ and not a true exploration of how community support and personal responsibility both could influence life choices and outcomes.

I want to say, that I too had one goal growing up, getting out. It wasn’t as hard as she wants to lead the reader to believe. Often personal choices led to people staying in these communities, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that choice. It wasn’t the right choice for me, and I have found living in a larger town in Arkansas to be fulfilling while allowing me to stay connected to my family. I did not need the author to look down her nose at me for not moving to an area with more diversity. I enjoy a diverse working environment, include all types of people in my friend group, and still maintain conservative values.

I was excited about others maybe having a look into the type of community I had grown up in. It was far from perfect and is a story that needs to be told, but not at the expense of being told that there is only one world view, and looking down on those that have that view.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Monica Potts grew up in the small town of Clinton, Arkansas, longing to escape and make something of her life beyond the religious, conservative future she seemed set to follow. As a young woman Potts was close friends with another young woman from her hometown, Darci, and their lives seemed set to follow a similar trajectory of heading to university and moving on and away from the fate which befell many of their peers: being a teenage mum (and housewife), married to a man they didn't love and stuck in a cycle of depression, addiction, abusive relationships and poverty. But Darci did end up staying in their hometown, and as an adult Potts returns to examine why they ended up following such different paths in life and why women in poorer rural areas face unique challenges in escaping this cycle.

I found this to be an incredibly engaging and thought-provoking read, and it is one I would highly recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.

[Kimberly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading "The Forgotten Girls" by Monica Potts was like reading an account of my own experiences with life in a rural town, where girls marry and have babies early and higher education is an unattainable dream for many (and indeed, not even something most want). Drug and alcohol abuse are rampant, everyone knows everything about you, and almost half of people in my old school district live at or below the poverty line. Like the author, I wanted something else from life from a very young age and am one of the few who is educated beyond a four year degree and moved on. Unlike the author, however, I rarely go back and would definitely not move back. And unlike the author, I don't feel like I owe anything to those I left behind. I don't think I'm better than those I left behind, I just have nothing in common with that life anymore.

This book will offend many people and, from reading a few early reviews, it already has. People who live in small towns have a lot of pride in those places, and from my experience, and the author's experience, they don't like when imperfections are pointed out, especially by those the residents deem to be outsiders. Places like the author's hometown are often romanticized but in her words "the reality of life in those towns drifts further from that idyll every year." Her book describes an insular place that resists change filled with people who have no desire to see the world outside of the familiar. However, as the author states "the world's going to intrude into [that] little bubble whether [they] like it or not". Readers must remember that this is a memoir and so is one person's personal experience with rural life; it does not claim to be representative of all experiences.
I wish the author would have gone into more depth about the causes and solutions for her hometown's struggles, instead of just scratching the surface, but again it's a memoir and not investigative journalism or a treatise on rural poverty,

Overall, I found this book to be interesting it kept my attention, but I don't know if it would have had I not grown up under similar circumstances. It did create some thoughtful discussions with my husband who grew up in a wealthy suburb and gave me words to describe my childhood experiences so he can better understand why I am the way I am today, I wish the author would have included more about her own life instead of making the book mostly about her childhood best friend.

Thank you NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the opportunity to read an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.