I have read a lot of reviews of this book since it came out. Positive review seem to arise from readers who applaud Monica's ambition and her desire to expand her world, and who grieve with her over her dear friend Denise's failure to develop her own talents and promise. I am in this crowd. I grew up in a rural community in the North and have witnessed first hand the results of a brain drain that pulls ambitious young people out into the wider world, leaving the less curious behind. Once upon a time, these stay-at-homes could look forward to stable lives as farmers, teachers, clerks, secretaries, nurses, and factory workers while keeping their community lively in the ways that rural communities have always done. Rural drug use changed that dynamic, devastating rural life. Denise's wild behavior was no different from the wild behavior of teenage girls in times past, but the consequences, as a result of drugs, was much worse.

The reviews that trash this book seem to be written by at least two different sets of people. The most offensive of these are ones that pretend that Monica Potts has some political agenda or axe to grind and that her book, and the statistics in it, are some kind of propaganda against rural people. Close behind are the loud Christians who seem to think that Denise's life, and lives like hers (drugs, unintended pregnancies, child abandonment, crime, whatever) are perfectly ok because Denise professes faith in Christ and didn't abort. These positions seem pretty weird to me. Why shouldn't we feel pain for Denise's life of addiction and the mental and physical degradation and feel frightened for her children who have been deprived of a mentally stable mother? Why do they blame Monica Potts for her reporting?

We seem to be so polarized that we can't take this book at face value and accord Monica Potts the right to tell a particular story to with a journalist's ability? It's hard to understand.

I received a review copy of this book from NetGalley.com. I then went out and bought two hardcovers for my library. One to mark up and one to keep clean. ( )

In The Forgotten Girls, author Monica Potts tells the story of how she escaped from rural, impoverished Clinton, Arkansas, and how her best friend from high school, Darci, did not. Darci fell victim to the systemic forces that keep people trapped in cycles of poverty, addiction, imprisonment, and abuse; Potts places the blame squarely on rural society, indifferent parenting, and especially on evangelical religion, which tells women they should marry young and make babies rather than going to college and having careers. It’s a sad story, and unfortunately it is not one that is well told. Potts’s writing is marred by redundancy, as if she does not trust readers to remember what she has already written. Darci herself is a frustrating, opaque character. All in all, this is yet another book that might have worked better as an investigative newspaper series. ( )

This is a combination of memoir and state of society, exploring how the lives of girls and women in the author's hometown are restricted and affected by a combination of poverty, dropping out of education, limited employment prospects, religious conservatism and social expectations. The author writes about these things while telling the story of herself and Darci, two women who have been friends from childhood but whose lives have diverged.

Both girls grew up in Clinton, Arkansas, a small southern town in families with issues, and were identified as very bright at school, "gifted and talented". They both thought about going to college from their teens. But while Monica Potts stumbled across amazing opportunities and went to study at the prestigious university Bryn Mawr, and has become a successful journalist, Darci drifted into boys, parties, sex, drugs, all too much, too young, dropped out of education and spiralled intro all kinds of trouble. Monica Potts recounts details of many twists and turns from childhood, growing apart, losing touch as she goes off to college, reestablishing contact in their 30s and trying to help and support Darci but the dilemmas that presents when it is clear that her friend is still on a destructive path.

The story is interspersed with references to sociological research into the area and into the experiences of people in Clinton and towns like it.

I originally heard some extracts from this book as a BBC Radio 4 serial here in the UK, and wanted to read the whole book properly.. I found this compelling, sad and thought provoking. ( )

I’ve got very mixed feelings about “The Forgotten Girls.” On the one hand, it’s a very moving memoir of lifetime friendship. On the other hand, it’s another of the “Hillbilly Elegy” genre that have become so popular since that book came out several years ago. Full disclosure: I am a 73-year-old male. The reason I say that is I found Monica Potts to be mildly sexist whenever she was discussing men. In one part of the book, she talks about the police coming to her friend Darcy’s house because Darcy had attacked her husband. Potts can’t seem to believe that Darcy would have done this unprovoked. It must have resulted in something the husband did. This is just one example of her seeming obsession with real or perceived patriarchy. Consider this excerpt from the book: “But only then did I realize why it had all fallen so hard on women: they were still expected to be the nurturers in spite of everything. They were supposed to keep the community going, through their thankless service to the next generation, the children to whom everyone turned for hope for a better future, no matter the status of their own lives. Women were held morally responsible for everything that happened in their families and communities. They were supposed to sacrifice everything for their children, even their own happiness and mental health.” Especially the last two sentences really need some sort of empirical support. Now, I know there is nothing wrong with editorializing in a nonfiction book. However, that said, in other parts of the book, Potts is meticulous about offering sources for her claims, to the point that in man reviews, readers criticized the book for sounding too much like an academic study. I think Monica Potts has much important to say, and I’m not trying to minimize that. It’s a valuable book, and I wouldn’t have given it 4 of 5 stars if I didn’t believe that. ( )

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-dependency. 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.) 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 gets thrown in jail because she decides to stop reporting to her probation officer. Somehow Potts sees all these things as not 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 rigged the system. She stole money that could have gone to people who were not selfish and lazy. Those people could have gone to school but she spent the money she received on drink and drugs without attending a full week of classes. Twice. 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 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. ( )