This is an important book and I hope others read it too.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. All the best to the girls (subject-matter) and the author.

Should be required reading for anyone who has the means to travel to Acadia or vacation in Maine. I was born in Maine just south of the Downeast region to parents “from away,” and though we only lived there for six years, we’ve been back often and in this book I felt the vivid truth in the author’s descriptions of the place and the people. She’s also “from away” but is not separate from the people she’s writing about, having become a part of a nearby community and gotten involved in the one she’s also writing about. She has immense respect for everyone in the book and renders them as fully human, neither victims or heroes. She manages to present both the unique challenges and the uniquely positive aspects of small-town life.

In <i>Downeast</i>, Georges follows the lives of five girls (and lots of other people) through their high school and early adult years, living in the upper eastern corner of Maine (and the United States). I was pretty excited to read this as (1) my boyfriend is from Maine and I wanted to learn more about the state, and (2) I’ve really enjoyed learning about rural America in the Appalachia’s and thought these might be similarities to other books I’ve read.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really enjoy this for various reasons:
- I’m good at remembering names, but Georges includes the names and details of grandparents, teachers, friends, boyfriends, everybody. Frequently I had to flip back and forth through pages to figure out who was who! I didn’t have an investment in anybody’s life because we kept switching between people!
- There’s not really any structure here; there are four loose sections but I wasn’t quite sure what the story arc was supposed to be set up. On a similar note, the ending felt like a slow fade.
- It is super boring.

I voluntarily obtained a digital version of this book free from Netgalley and Harper in exchange for an honest review.

Some of the best narrative nonfiction springs from when an author is able to get really granular with the subject at hand. When the writer digs deep, vein after vein of precious literary gems can be unearthed, painting vivid and compelling portraits of people and places. These stories are captivating and enlightening in the best of ways.

Some of the WORST narrative nonfiction starts in the same place. These are the stories wherein the author treats the subject(s) as some sort of vaguely anthropological study, holding themselves above the people with whom they are engaging. They parachute into a place and imagine that their brief dalliance is enough to bestow actual understanding.

The State of Maine has unfortunately seen a bit more of the latter treatment than the former in recent years, with this place and its denizens being rendered simplistically and/or stereotypically – junk shop kitsch instead of fine art.

I honestly wasn’t sure which I was going to get from “Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America,” the new book from Gigi Georges. I’ve been around long enough to know that these efforts to somehow “unlock” the truth of rural America often wind up being little more than condescending confirmations of the author’s already-extant attitudes, cherry picked to prop up whatever thesis they sported upon their arrival.

This book is not that.

Instead, what Georges has done is, well … do the work. Over the course of years, she spent time with the people of Washington County. Not just the five girls who served as the central figures in the narrative – although she clearly spent A LOT of time with them – but also the people in the community around them. Parents and teachers and friends and co-workers and what have you, all in service to crafting an accurate and honest rendering of who these girls are and how they both shape and are shaped by the place in which they grew up.

(Note: The names of the girls – along with some others – have been changed in an effort to protect privacy. However, for the most part, names of places and business and the like have remained the same.)

Washington County is among the country’s most rural areas. Distance and circumstance conspire to undercut the opportunities for young people in the region – particularly those of young women. That isn’t to say that success can’t be found – it can and often is. However, finding the best path to that success can be a bit more difficult than in many other places.

In “Downeast,” we meet five girls – Willow, Vivian, Mckenna, Audrey and Josie – who have grown up in the various villages and towns of Washington County. While the specifics of their backgrounds are different, the general state of their circumstances is very similar – they are women growing up in a place where opportunity for women is tougher to come by.

Audrey is the star basketball player who helped lead the local high school to a state championship and has the opportunity to turn her athletic and academic excellence into a shot at one of the state’s best colleges. Mckenna is an elite athlete in her own right, a top-shelf softball pitcher whose primary goal is to take to the water and captain her own lobster boat, just like her father. Willow has spent much of her life bouncing around, dealing with the issues that spring from her father’s struggles with addiction and abuse; she’s just looking to find her own way. Vivian is a creative soul, a writer who finds herself drifting away from the close-knit family and church life she’s lived since childhood. And Josie is the valedictorian, an elite student heading off to the Ivy League and unsure of the connection she will maintain with the place she called home for so long.

And unfurling behind and amidst these stories, the lush landscape of Washington County. The rugged natural beauty and the working waterfronts. The joys and heartbreaks that come from small town lives lived. And the people – oh, the people. We meet fishermen and teachers and coaches (and plenty of folks who are combinations therein), all of whom wear their hearts on their sleeves when it comes to Downeast life. Triumphs and tragedies abound.

“Downeast” could easily have been the usual dreck featuring someone from elsewhere (who believes themselves to know better) parachuting in for a few weeks or months and slapping together a story that confirmed what they believed they already know. Part of me feared it would be.

Instead, we get a thoughtful, nuanced look at a deceptively complex place and the people who live there. What Gigi Georges has done is make a good faith effort to drill down into the cultural bedrock of Washington County and share the warts-and-all results of her labors. The book is honest in both singing the region’s praises and acknowledging its faults. By placing her focus on these five different-but-similar girls, Georges has crafted a wide-ranging portrait of what it means to live in such a place in the 21st century. We’re offered real insight into these lives, full and genuine characterizations of five frankly remarkable young women (though I doubt any of them would view themselves as such).

Far from poverty tourism or half-baked cultural anthropology, “Downeast” engages with the lives of its subjects from a place of respect and egalitarianism. There’s no sense of superiority on the part of the author here, no effort to place herself above the people about whom she’s writing. And that eye-to-eye engagement is why this book works.

Well, that and the fact that Gigi Georges can really write. She has a particular knack for capturing a, for lack of a better term, vibe – as someone who has spent his share of time in Washington County, I can vouch for the fact that the energy of the place really crackles forth from the page. The characters come alive as well. These are real people, of course – this is nonfiction after all – but they actually FEEL real, which is far rarer than you might think.

“Downeast” is a fascinating read. It will capture the imaginations of those who have never set foot in Washington County, to be sure, but it will also ring familiar to those who have never left it. Growing up is hard; what this book does so well is illustrate the specific difficulties of doing so in this place and time. An insightful, incisive work of nonfiction that celebrates five special young women and the ways of their world.

Read if you: Want a revealing and empathetic look at young girls growing up in the most rural and impoverished county in Maine.

Librarians/booksellers: Purchase for your readers that enjoy accounts of contemporary society but want something that's more personal and story-based than heavy on statistics.

Many thanks to Harper and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.

We meet five girls and travel with them on their troubled road. Though their journey is marked with pain and scarcity, there is beauty, stubbornness, and hope.
Their stories remind us of the value of tradition: family and community, respect for nature, purposefulness and contentment found in work.

A beautiful, powerful, book that will stay with you.
Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for this wonderful ARC.