Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji

by Emily Mendenhall

Unmasked is the story of what happened in Okoboji, a small Iowan tourist town, when a collective turn from the coronavirus to the economy occurred in the COVID summer of 2020. State political failures, local negotiations among political and public health leaders, and community (dis)belief about the virus resulted in Okoboji being declared a hotspot just before the Independence Day weekend, when an influx of half a million people visit the town.

The story is both personal and political. Author Emily Mendenhall, an anthropologist at Georgetown University, grew up in Okoboji, and her family still lives there. As the events unfolded, Mendenhall was in Okoboji, where she spoke formally with over 100 people and observed a community that rejected public health guidance, revealing deep-seated mistrust in outsiders and strong commitments to local thinking. Unmasked is a fascinating and heartbreaking account of where people put their trust, and how isolationist popular beliefs can be in America's small communities.

Genres: Science, Health, Nonfiction

301 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 15, 2022

About the author

Emily Mendenhall is an anthropologist, Guggenheim Fellow, and Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She has authored Syndemic Suffering (2012), Global Mental Health (2015), Rethinking Diabetes (2019), Unmasked (2022), Savoring Care (2025) and Invisible Illness (2026). She serves as Editor-in-Chief of a new publication, Science Politics, and has written for Scientific American, Vox, and Psychology Today.

Reviews

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author, an anthropologist, grew up on West Lake Okoboji in northwest Iowa and returned there during 2020, where she studied the response to the pandemic in this small rural area. An area where the population booms during the summer as people come there to vacation. It’s where I grew up spending every summer from 3rd grade through college. I ran across this book and met Emily purely by chance at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville in 2022. It’s a fast, interesting read. I recommend it for anyone with an interest in public health and anyone who wonders what was driving the various community responses to the pandemic. Of course, for readers like myself who have a personal connection to the area, it’s that much more interesting when you’re familiar with all the places and businesses mentioned.

[Maureen Grigsby · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting story of how the community of Okoboji, Iowa, reacted to the
Covid crisis and largely stayed open, refused masking and refused to implement many other public health recommendations. The reasons for these choices are, as we know, complicated. There were issues of economy, loss of income, political issues, false information regarding the danger of wearing masks, and poor national leadership on the pandemic. The dilemma now is that there has been such a loss of trust in our public health sector, that the next large outbreak will show more of the same mixed behavior.

[Pam Mckinney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is well written, very readable by anyone and offers insight to why people with the same roots and family can be so very divided first by masks and later by Covid vaccinations.

During our Covid years, like many people, I have often been shocked, taken aback, surprised or hurt by vitriolic reactions of friends/family to comments or posted photos I considered to be neutral or innocuous on masking or getting my Covid jabs. I was (and truthfully still am) baffled by people I grew up with who think nothing of dropping everything to help a neighbor in need, but refused to wear a mask to protect an aging, ailing close relative because it “violated” their rights. While still baffled, I do feel like I have more insight into those views after reading Professor Mendenhall’s book.

Admittedly, I purchased the book because my family is deeply rooted in and around Okoboji. Although I have not yet met her, like Professor Mendenhall, I grew up in the area, moved away for college and career and yet still consider myself an Iowan - from “The Lakes” area of NW Iowa.

While the book is a snapshot of one relatively small community area, the insights, realizations and illuminations are easily transferable to just about any rural, conservative (Trump supporting), Midwestern community, State, or area.

[John Modrak · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is the definition of Confirmation Bias, except...

Her theses are now essentially, debunked. Most prudent folks would look at the schooling policies she described as prudent.

In fact if you were to White Label, and pitch this policy across the company, it would likely get wide buyin especially with what parents know now.

This book, was written with a seeming bias to start, and doesn't hold up against recent knowledge and understanding of outcomes.

Emily does a poor job of documenting the long term impacts, and comparing those to other locales she might consider more responsible. I went into this expecting a more balanced and intellectually honest analysis and came out a bit disappointed.

[Cara Stone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like the contents of the book; however, I listened to the audiobook and, while the technical production was fine, the delivery of the narration was a challenge to get through.

[Scott Pearson · Rating 4 out of 5]

In anthropology, an ethnography is an account of the culture as told by the people in that culture. As such, it’s basically a fancy word for a series of interviews within a group of people linked together. In this work, Mendenhall, a medical anthropologist working at Georgetown University, offers us an ethnography of the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in rural America. She does so in a personal account while she visits her hometown in Okoboji, Iowa.

Okoboji is a rural, tourist town based on a beautiful lake. It consists of almost exclusively white people, most of whom are politically and culturally conservative. In an election year, Trump was on the forefront of many minds. Mendenhall’s father was a urology doctor now sitting on the city council. This sort of complicated politics where social pressures impact decision-making – as openly described here – is common in smaller towns lie Okoboji.

By Mendenhall’s telling, the town did not handle the pandemic well, much like the rest of the United States. In the spring of 2020, restaurant workers were heavily impacted, but few restaurants shut down. In June, a peak in case counts occurred, associated with the start of the summer season. In the late summer, debates at local school board meetings raged about how to reopen schools. After reopening, mandated by Iowa state government, local COVID case counts increased dramatically. Indicative of the small-town dynamics, the author even wrote a piece in the local newspaper, cited as influential in producing a stronger mask mandate in the school district.

With the strength of her academic training and ability to see structural issues, Mendenhall centrally blames a lack of national and state leadership for Okoboji’s issues. Under the guise of personal responsibility, leaders placed the brunt of dealing with coronavirus on local shoulders. Correspondingly, businesses and local leadership often put self-interest and profits over doing the right thing for their neighbors. Mendenhall bases this conclusion not on political whim but on many interviews and first-hand observation. Given her thorough data collection, it’s really hard to come to any other conclusion after reading this account.

This book is one of the first systematic accounts of this pandemic, published even before its conclusion. I expect further, similar stories to be published in coming years. Mendenhall’s account will expose to the reading public and record for history just how disheveled the American response looked like on the ground. Response to this book will likely be driven by politics at first, but over time, I expect this book to be a helpful resource to academic researchers and governmental planners who aim to bring about a different outcome than we saw from coronavirus.

[Elaina · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who lived through 2020 in Iowa, I think this book does an excellent job discussing how varied reactions to the pandemic were as well as the ways in which our government (looking at you Kim Reynolds) failed us. Through interviews and personal experiences, Mendenhall conveys the confusion that came from the pandemic (ie, how do we stop the spread, what are next steps, how do we keep everyone safe while maintaining normalcy), and she details different ways people in Okoboji responded to the pandemic. Mendenhall includes discussion about masking and the reason(s) people did or didn’t mask. She includes discussions about the vaccine and how certain conspiracy theories started and were perpetuated. She discusses the closure of businesses and how, even though they were closing to keep people safe, the businesses faced community backlash.

I think my biggest issue with the book is that it feels a little too informal. The author mentions that she normally writes for a very academic audience, and I think that shows when she tries to write for a general audience. It feels at times like the author is questioning the intelligence of her audience, and/or she’s trying too hard to be relatable. She painstakingly details a conversation where one person says someone looks like Lin-Manuel Miranda, and she responds with (paraphrasing) “omg that’s so funny, can I tell him you said that??” There are multiple points where the author notes “this was the discussion I had with someone, and then this is what I wrote down after that discussion”. Please trust your audience a little more, I promise you they don’t need to know what you wrote down word for word after this discussion you just told us about in great detail.

Overall, I think this does a good job showing the ways in which Iowans responded to the pandemic, but I wish the author would’ve trusted her audience more to draw connections and make conclusions. Minus one star for the condescension, but plus four stars for the discussion of the response of Iowans to the pandemic.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in preparation for a book club discussion and because it is a topic that interests me. Emily Mendenhall spent her summer researching the COVID response in an area where she grew up that has several small tourist town and compared it with the very different response of the large city where she lives and works during the school year. I found this book interesting in part because I live in a small, rural community and have family living in a large city in another state. I found the comparisons between the states response to the epidemic and how that affected what happened in Okoboji versus Georgetown. This is a book that covers this controversial topic without being difficult to read. It allows you to go back to summer of 2020 and think about not only what happened in your community, state and at the national level but explore from this distance the reasons for them.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book and rated it 4.5 stars. The perspective of a medical anthropologist talking about her own home town gives a fascinating perspective and there is every reason to believe that this represents a much wider phenomenon. The tone of the book is not quite as conversational as I would like but I did like reading about Mendenhall’s journey and about her friends, acquaintances and relatives. I found that the extensive quotes, while important, were hard to follow as they reflected the non-linear way that people speak informally. To me the value of this book is in the author’s powerful, personal perspective. Thank you to Edelweiss and Vanderbilt University Press for the advance reader copy.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book by a medical anthropologist about the Covid-19 outbreak in her hometown, Okoboji, Iowa. I learned a lot about the town and the history of the Great Lakes region of Iowa (which I had never heard of before).

It's well written and I enjoyed reading it. (And I'm entirely too sleepy right now to write a real review)

[Katelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting examination of a small Iowa town that becomes a busy tourist destination during the summer, and how people react to COVID, health care recommendations, a lack of guidance from the state government and more. Well examined.

[Julia Morrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wavered between a 3 and a 4 and sometimes a 5. It was interesting with a lot of personal anecdotes and interactions and I learned a lot, but it left me still not totally understanding the mindsets of the anti-maskers. I do know a lot more than I did but I guess it still makes no sense.

[Ali McGowan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Described Iowa’s poor decision making during the COVID pandemic. Interesting hearing the names and places of where I spend my summers and reliving the Northwest Iowa region’s lack of public health awareness!

[Allie Cho · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book basically in one sitting! By zooming in to her home town of the author is able to thoughtfully explores how national & global forces of neoliberalism, colonialism, and whiteness play out in local politics in Okoboji/affect how individuals in a community respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The book delves into the community in a way that is both extremely interesting and easily digestible, even to a lay audience--definitely a must read!

[Geoff Garnett · Rating 3 out of 5]

An engaging read, but confusing. Maybe that was the point since it describes the confused response to Covid in a specific town. I couldn't really tell were the memoire ended and the anthropology started, but the latter made for many confused transcripts. What is clear is how badly organized public health and governance is in Iowa. And I really don't see the attraction of the Iowa Great Lakes Region as a holiday destination.

[Karly Dodds · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mendenhall takes a deep dive into a small community addressing the COVID health crisis, while balancing the delicate economics associated with tourism. She encourages her readers to think about how we handled the epidemic and how we can (and should) develop policies based on the things that we did well.