by Monica Potts
First published 2023
Monica Potts examines why she escaped her small Arkansas town while her childhood friend Darci could not. Both girls grew up poor in the Ozark foothills, bonding over books and dreams of leaving Clinton behind. They studied maps together, planning their escapes from a place marked by broken families, shuttered factories, and limited opportunities. Monica eventually left for college and became a journalist. Darci remained, struggling with addiction and homelessness as a single mother. When Potts later covers poverty as a reporter, she discovers that women like Darci face sharply declining life expectancy due to suicide, overdoses, and alcoholism. She returns to understand the forces that separated their paths. Potts traces how inheritance, education, religion, and politics constrain choices for rural women. She reveals the unemployment, drug abuse, sexism, and evangelicalism that trap poor white women across rural America. This personal investigation illuminates the complex causes behind what researchers call deaths of despair.
Genres: american-fiction, poverty, social-issues, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, family-drama, social-commentary
Setting: Arkansas, Clinton, Ozark Foothills
Period: 21st Century
272 pages · Hardcover · Random House
Content warnings: addiction, depression, substance-abuse, suicide