3.5 stars, rounded up to 4! There is a lot to love about this book. I appreciated the journalistic look at the author's life and at this phenomenon that does not receive enough attention. This is something I think about a lot - how people who grew up similarly and with similar socioeconomic profiles end up so different - and I'm so glad this book exists. I did feel as though the wider context was lost by focusing primarily on Darci rather than multiple examples in her hometown but it was nice to get to know her so deeply.

This was both an interesting and difficult story to read. It is an honest story about poverty, lack of resources, abuse, addiction, lack of education and dysfunctional families. Sadly, it is a far too common story of the challenges of many rural communities. As a retired Social Worker, I have witnessed first hand the complications of lives such as these, but Monica Potts adds such a personal dimension. Thanks #NetGalley #PenguinRandomHouse

Monica Potts is a journalist with FiveThirtyEight who grew up in the small town of Clinton, Arkansas and decides to take on a project retracing the paths she and her childhood best friend took, trying to mark what caused their lives to diverge so significantly. Both she and her childhood best friend, Darci, were incredibly smart children who did well in school and wanted to escape their stifling hometown, which didn't seem to hold much promise for them. However, only Monica made it out to attend college--Darci stayed behind in Clinton, and her life began a downward spiral.

Much of what Potts' storytelling seeks to explain through this case study is some of the causes of the rapid and frightening increase in mortality and "deaths of despair" in rural, under-educated, white women. She does an incredible job combining very personal stories of hers and Darci's with research on race, religion, health outcomes, economics, culture, etc. in impoverished rural America.

Spoiler alert, the book is very depressing, but it's an important story to tell and I think Potts handles these sensitive topics with a lot of care and nuance. At this point we've all read articles and thinkpieces about conservatism and poverty in rural America, anti-immigrant sentiment, the opioid epidemic, religion and teen pregnancy, etc., but Potts really makes these issues personal and more understandable through her case study. It adds a lot to the conversation that can't be illuminated through statistics alone, and is told with compassion rather than judgement.

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. <i><b>The Forgotten Girls,</i></b> 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. Liberation from the clutches of the church and the social ills of their birthplace were 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 <i>The American Prospect,</i> a progressive liberal magazine.

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 contributed to Darci’s and other female classmates’ dysfunctional and unfortunate lives: the impact of evangelical Christianity—its stranglehold on southern communities and its exhortation that women accept the cross God has 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>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>

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—she says she felt increasingly “at home”—Monica moved back to the town with her partner a few years ago.) The 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 Darci’s lying down on 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 deeply uncomfortable.

It’s true that the author’s family endured poverty, hardship, and tragedy, <spoiler>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</spoiler> 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 man of the moment and shaped by a 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 of their remaining 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 social milieu in which the friends grew up is illuminating, but her progressive political bias occasionally intrudes. 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 masking (whose effectiveness remains controversial to this day). Potts appears to believe that if more Arkansans had virtuously 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 squelched during the pandemic. The heads of the NIH and the NIAD were both involved in sidelining scientists who had different, inconvenient perspectives. The Biden administration actively blacklisted 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 a bit 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 generally tells 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 or 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?

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

Rating: 3.5

Monica Potts uses her search in Van Buren County, Arkansas for her childhood best friend as a vehicle to build a cohesive case for how toxic this region of America's heartland has become, particularly for women. I was moved by the plight of Monica's friend Darci Brawner, and by the author's concern that she had in any way been responsible for their rift or Darci's hardship. Even moreso though, I was blown away by the author's ability to cohesively present the factual history of Arkansas and its devolution, from fertility issues with the Great Plains, slave labor, Japanese and German WWII camp site, rural poverty, conservative politics, evangelical religion, through to the Great Recession and the opioid epidemic.

Several years ago I remember picking up a copy of JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy in hopes that it would explain the dichotomy between centrally located Appalachia and progressive coastal urban centers; I wanted to understand what caused the red/blue rift in America. But I was disappointed that that book didn't delivered on its promise. So I'm amazed that Monica Potts has accomplished this, through honestly portraying the losses her family and those of her friends' sustained, and through thorough research and concise documentation.

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, 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 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 over 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: April 18, 2023
April 2023 Must-Read Books

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.

Potts grew up in a very small Arkansas town. She managed to leave but her best friend, Darci, stayed and they lost contact.
The author circles around all the causes for Darci’s difficulties, citing articles and studies to substantiate her points.
The one reason she mostly evades is Darci made choices that led to her path In life, and many were poor choices. To me, that was the crux of the book. Potts made choices that that afforded her an entirely different life.

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.

A powerful memoir about trauma, addiction, class, gender in the rural South- I felt for Darci and definitely could see she was the author’s best friend, I would love to hear more from Darci herself because there is definitely more to her story

I just finished reading "The Forgotten Girls" by Monica Potts.

What an interesting book that touched on issues that we don't see often. Potts is a journalist by background, and it shows as this book reads like a really long news-magazine article in some ways. She tells the backstories of women in her hometown in Arkansas, especially tracing that of Darci, her best friend growing up.

She delves into the many reasons why women in small towns essentially fail at life as they grow up - having children too young, getting into drugs and alcohol, and never finishing their education. As someone who reads extensively about women's and social issues, I enjoyed reading the book in order to learn more about this demographic.

If you are interested in learning more about these topics, I would definitely recommend this book to you. It is less of a story, though, and more of a commentary filled with examples from real-life women, so if you are looking for a true story that reads like a novel, this book might not be as much for you.

I received a free ARC of this book as a reviewer for NetGalley. My thanks to the publisher. I am not compelled to write a positive review. #sponsored

"The Forgotten Girls" by Monica Potts is a moving and insightful book that sheds light on the often-overlooked struggles of young women in rural America. Through personal stories and interviews, Potts brings attention to the complex issues of poverty, lack of opportunity, and social neglect that plague these communities. Her writing is engaging and thought-provoking, and she provides a nuanced look at the challenges faced by these girls and women. While at times the book can be heavy and difficult to read, it ultimately leaves the reader with a sense of hope and a greater understanding of the resilience and strength of those who endure such difficult circumstances. Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in issues of social justice and the realities of life in rural America.

I was given this book as an ARC by NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

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.

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.

A story of the author and her childhood best friend Darcy.Monica Potts shares their childhood their experiences growing up in the ultra religious extremely conservative Deep South.Monica was determined to escape go off to college but Darci who also was a smart young women stayed and her life became more troubled.This was a heartbreaking read for me the sadness of one friends life sinking further and further in to darkness and the other trying to understand why.# netgalley #theforgottengirls.

Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC of this novel.

Monica Potts' memoir is not really a memoir in a traditional sense. While exploring deep rooted issues such as poverty and addiction, the novel really dives into the life of her friend Darci. Overall this painted a bleak picture, and I have firsthand experienced some of what Monica exposes in her novel.

However, I really struggled with how much exposing of Darci and Darci's thoughts/life the author uses. I am not sure I can fully get past that to truly recommend the novel.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC: I'd rate this 3.5, rounded up. It's not a classic memoir--I found it more of a sociology text of rural life, drug addiction, poverty, Evangelical Christians, Arkansas. The author barely reveals herself, but instead explores the life of her friend Darci who is trapped in a cycle of drug addiction, poverty, abusive relationships, incarceration. Initially, Potts returns to Clinton, Arkansas after many years away, but in 2017, for unclear reasons, she relocated there. The book is thought provoking, but it suffers from being between two genres: sociological study and memoir. It does a good job of exploring the experience impoverished, drug addicted women in rural Arkansas. It doesn't reveal much about the author. It felt like a more honest look at rural poverty than one written by another eastern educated former resident, who currently serves in congress. It adds to the literature on poverty, but with some essential flaws. Potts is a reporter and I don't think she ever clarified her role in the story--she's detached enough to remain an enigma.

I found this book to be memorable and meaningful. It gives a glimpse into the lives of people in a small rural town in the south. The sense of failure and lack of hope were pronounced through the author's sharing the story of her childhood friend.
I was blown away by some of the statistics that were a part of her research into the decline in health and economic potential for people who choose to remain in towns such as Clinton, Arkansas. This is a heartbreaking tale that could be repeated in any number of rural areas in both the south and across the nation. Opportunity has passed many of these people by, and they aren't even aware of the loss or willing to fight against it.
The opioid and meth epidemics have had a higher than average impact on the lives of people living in these economically depressed rural areas. These drugs are a type of escape from the towns and situations that people can't physically escape. They create a downward spiraling cycle, and lives, like Darci's, that are out of control and too often incapable of being set right.
All told, this book tells a seriously sad story of lost opportunity and hope for so many like Darci who are unable to face their demons and find the help they need to bring their lives into some kind of stability. It is a tribute to her concern that Monica chose to keep trying to be the person that could make some kind of difference for her friend. The lesson may be that in truth, one can not save others from their choices, but can only show they still care about them in spite of everything.
My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title. I recommend it for anyone interested in the subjects discussed.

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.

The Forgotten Girls is a difficult review. It is billed as a memoir, but it is actually the story of the author's childhood best friend, including quotes from the friend's diary. It feels a bit exploitative, especially because we don't hear anything from the best. friend directly.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC for an honest review.