{ "item_title" : "Paper Girl", "item_author" : [" Beth Macy "], "item_description" : "There couldn't be a timelier book . . . searingly poignant, essential . . . Macy follows closely in the footsteps of . . . Barbara Ehrenreich and Tracy Kidder, combining memoir with reportage, a raft of sobering statistics and, most uniquely in our era, a willingness to engage in uncomfortable conversations. --The Washington PostFrom one of our most acclaimed chroniclers of the forces eroding America's social fabric, her most personal and powerful work: a reckoning with the changes that have rocked her own beloved small Ohio hometown Urbana, Ohio, was not a utopia when Beth Macy grew up there in the '70s and '80s--certainly not for her family. Her dad was known as the town drunk, which hurt, as did their poverty. But Urbana had a healthy economy and thriving schools, and Macy had middle-class schoolmates whose families became her role models. Though she left for college on a Pell Grant and then a faraway career in journalism, she still clung gratefully to the place that had helped raise her. But as Macy's mother's health declined in 2020, she couldn't shake the feeling that her town had dramatically hardened. Macy had grown up as the paper girl, delivering the local newspaper, which was the community's civic glue. Now she found scant local news and precious little civic glue. Yes, much of the work that once supported the middle class had gone away, but that didn't begin to cover the forces turning Urbana into a poorer and angrier place. Absenteeism soared in the schools and in the workplace as a mental health crisis gripped the small city. Some of her old friends now embraced conspiracies. In nearby Springfield, Macy watched as her ex-boyfriend--once the most liberal person she knew--became a lead voice of opposition against the Haitian immigrants, parroting false talking points throughout the 2024 presidential campaign. This was not an assignment Beth Macy had ever imagined taking on, but after her mother's death, she decided to figure out what happened to Urbana in the forty years since she'd left. The result is an astonishing book that, by taking us into the heart of one place, brings into focus our most urgent set of national issues. Paper Girl is a gift of courage, empathy, and insight. Beth Macy has turned to face the darkness in her family and community, people she loves wholeheartedly, even the ones she sometimes struggles to like. And in facing the truth--in person, with respect--she has found sparks of human dignity that she has used to light a signal fire of warning but also of hope.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers3.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/59/365/673/0593656733_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "32.00", "online_price" : "32.00", "our_price" : "32.00", "club_price" : "32.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "32.00" } }

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In 2020, journalist and Virginia-based author Beth Macy (Dopesick, Raising Lazarus) began frequently visiting her hometown of Urbana, Ohio, as her mother’s health deteriorated. Each extended stay left her profoundly untethered. In Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America, Macy seeks to understand how and why her community seemed to unravel in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of Trumpism. Macy’s first memoir is as much a deeply personal reckoning as it is a disciplined sociological investigation. Organized into three parts, the book smoothly navigates interviews with Urbana citizens and sobering research about broad topics like the rising cost of living, stagnant wages, misinformation and the politicization of public education. Early chapters mine Macy’s past to contrast the new normal of Urbana: absenteeism in schools, a dearth of local news, a ceaseless wave of mental health crises fortified by generational poverty. Growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, Macy experienced family dysfunction. Her dad habitually drained his paycheck at the local VFW, while her mom doggedly mastered frugality. Despite the economic hardships and emotional trauma that marked Macy’s childhood, upward mobility to financial freedom and independence was attainable. Decades later, Macy realizes this ladder to prosperity has disintegrated; she empathetically details the harrowing experiences of young Urbanans like 18-year-old Silas James, a recent high school graduate, incoming community college student and transgender man. Feeling a kinship with Silas, Macy carefully establishes his journey into burgeoning adulthood as a narrative through line. Paper Girl burrows into the jagged grooves of social schisms, seeking to find purpose in pain. Macy humanizes the metastasizing inequality and class despair permeating the United States. For example, she explores the ever-widening rift with her older sister, Cookie, “a righteous Christian warrior.” Macy’s frustration with Cookie’s moral armor is evident, but the portrayal of her sister is rounded with grace. How do you reach common ground with those who want to burn it all down? Macy plants a hopeful stake in the vampiric heart of collective fear and apathy. Both wide-ranging and strikingly intimate, Paper Girl is an affirmation of faith in humanity, and Macy lights the way ahead, even as the darkness stretched before us threatens to swallow our conviction.