
The Forgotten Girls
A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America
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Narrated by:
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Monica Potts
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By:
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Monica Potts
Talented and ambitious, Monica Potts and her best friend, Darci, were both determined to make something of themselves. How did their lives turn out so different?
“The Forgotten Girls is much more than a memoir; it’s the unflinching story of rural women trying to live in the most rugged, ultra-religious, and left-behind places in America.”—Beth Macy, author of Dopesick
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 tumultuous family lives and declining town—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, Potts discovered what she already intuitively knew about the women in Arkansas: Their life expectancy had dropped steeply—the sharpest such fall in a century. This decline has been attributed to “deaths of despair”—suicide, alcoholism, and drug overdoses—but Potts knew their causes were too complex to identify in a sociological study. She had grown up with these women, and when she saw Darci again, she found that her childhood friend—addicted to drugs, often homeless, a single mother—was now on track to becoming a statistic.
In this gripping narrative, Potts deftly pinpoints the choices that sent her and Darci on such different paths and then widens the lens to explain why those choices are so limited. The Forgotten Girls is a profound, compassionate look at a population in trouble, and a uniquely personal account of the way larger forces, such as inheritance, education, religion, and politics, shape individual lives.
©2023 Monica Potts (P)2023 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
"The Forgotten Girls is much more than a memoir; it's the unflinching story of rural women trying to live in the most rugged, ultra-religious and left-behind places in America. Rendering what she sees with poignancy and whip-smart analyses, Monica Potts took a gutsy, open-hearted journey home and turned it into art.”—Beth Macy, author of Dopesick and Raising Lazarus
“The Forgotten Girls is beautiful and hard, a deeply reported memoir of a place, a friendship, a childhood and a country riven by systemic injustices transformed into individual tragedies. Monica Potts is a gifted writer; I read this extraordinary story of friendship and sisterhood, ambition and loss in rural America in one sitting; it is propulsive, clear and really important.”—Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad
“A troubling tale of heartland America in cardiac arrest, of friendship tested, of meth and Sonic burgers and every other kind of bad nourishment, of what we have let happen to our rural towns, and what they have invited on themselves. A personal and highly readable story about two women in a small cranny of America, but which offers an illuminating panorama of where our country stands.”—Sam Quinones, author of Dreamland and The Least of Us
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Poignant
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Overlooked. I love the authors voice as well.
Fantastic
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Great retelling of rural American life
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Spoke to my small town soul
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Only one issue
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Having relatives from a similar small, economically depressed town, the entire story of what happens to those who can’t find their way out was all too familiar. I appreciated the lack of false hope as well. This is not a story of redemption, or overcoming all odds to succeed. This is the unvarnished truth that so many people - women especially - live through every day. Highly recommend this short listen, especially if you’re interested in what living in a small, rural, and socially/economically depressed community is like.
Outstanding story
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A helpful explanation into the thinking and beliefs of white rural America
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Ranks in my top 10 favorite reads
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A deep & melancholy story
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Wonderful look into rural white America
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