Paper Girl - by Beth Macy (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From 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.

Review Quotes

"Want to know why America is fractured? Read Paper Girl, an indispensable account of how things got so ugly here. Beth Macy grew up poor, with an alcoholic dad, in Urbana, Ohio, yet through education she made the jump to the middle class. Returning to her homeplace, she probes the factors that make a move like hers almost unimaginable for the kids who sit in the same classrooms as she did. Heartfelt, intimate and enraging, it is more than a memoir; it's a manifesto." --Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Memorial Days

"Beautifully written and rigorously reported, Beth Macy's Paper Girl is an answered prayer, an urgently needed voyage along America's most painful fracture lines that is at once mesmerizing, chilling, and--perhaps most remarkably--hopeful." --Andrea Elliott, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Invisible Child

"In this tender and deeply reported memoir, Beth Macy examines how the forces that made her, have unmade generations to follow. Paper Girl reveals the makings of a crackerjack reporter and a person of profound integrity who refuses to leave behind the people and places she loves." --Eliza Griswold, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Amity and Prosperity

"I think only Beth Macy could write a book that combines such genuine empathy, brutal honesty, and really smart analytic insight. Paper Girl is at once deeply personal and firmly anchored in social science research. Macy helps us better understand the political-cultural divide that's ripping America apart while somehow managing to humanize both sides of that divide. This beautifully written book will teach you a lot about your fellow Americans, but it will also change how you feel about them." --Steven Levitsky, New York Times bestselling coauthor of How Democracies Die

"One of the most humane and insightful journalists working today, Macy has triumphed with Paper Girl. It weaves together her personal story with her urgent wish to understand how her hometown lost its way economically, educationally, and emotionally. Anyone trying to understand America in its current incarnation needs to read this beautiful book." -- Susan Orlean, New York Times bestselling author of The Orchid Thief

"In Paper Girl, one of our greatest chroniclers of the America that's fallen victim to the crises of capitalism weaves together memoir, biography, elegy, advocacy--all of it surging with the energy of right now and profoundly informed by her Ohio hometown. This giant-hearted book offers hope as well as clear-eyed warnings, which land with the force of a revelation." --Jeff Sharlet, bestselling author of The Undertow and The Family

"With Paper Girl, Beth Macy masterfully assesses a dysfunctional class system witnessed both as reporter and through lived experience. This essential book reveals that resolving our current sociopolitical crisis requires not just digging for facts but digging even deeper into our very souls." --Sarah Smarsh, New York Times bestselling author of Heartland

"What a beautiful book! Beth Macy's compassion and keen-eyed wisdom make for powerful storytelling. Paper Girl is a personal journey that explores greater truths and should be read by anyone trying to understand what's going on in America today." --Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle

About the Author

Beth Macy has won more than two dozen national journalism awards, including a Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard University, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Dopesick, which was made into a Peabody Award-winning series for Hulu. Three of her books have been New York Times bestsellers. She lives in Roanoke, Virginia.