The Forgotten Girls

Think Elena Ferrante and My Brilliant Friend. Potts is excellent at showing how the political sentiments that white, poorly educated women uphold ultimately circumscribe their lives. In many ways it’s a universal story: rural Britain fits this mould too – Francesca Angelini * The Sunday Times *The Forgotten Girls rings with authenticity, a powerful, personal analysis of how women in poor, white, religious societies suffer. This, it struck me, isn’t just an American story; it’s the American story – Melanie Reid * The Times *A deeply moving story of growing up in America’s Bible Belt. I thought about it for days afterwards – Francesca Steele * I News *The Forgotten Girls is a lament for lost opportunities and wasted lives; a controlled expression of rage at a system that fails so many even as it exploits their despair – Stephanie Merritt * The Observer *At its heart an intensely moving, personal story of unbreakable friendship, this, like Tara Westover’s Educated, is a book that packs a much wider resonance at a time when the gap between rich and poor grows ever wider across the world. It asks vital questions about life chances; and the seeming randomness of who gets them, and who doesn’t – Caroline Sanderson * The Bookseller, Non-Fiction Book of the Month *This is a patient, heartfelt description of the dark side of the American dream, a once vibrant community abandoned by global capitalism, and prey to any demagogue promising to ‘Make America Great Again’ * The Tablet *A deeply personal memoir of childhood. Potts has created a complicated tribute to her friend and to a generation ‘set up for failure’ – Katy Guest * The Mail on Sunday *A masterly labour of love. In its unflinching exploration of character, circumstance and destiny, it’s perfect. * Prospect Magazine *Tender, perceptive, important - and heartbreaking – Lee ChildI couldn’t put it down… American culture has a toxic forgetting at its heart, a forgetting about communities that have lost their way and a blindness to why they fail. It made me think of so many people’s lives in small towns and rural areas in Britain – a powerful reminder that when you forget about people and consign them to eternity in failing places, then you create something deeply harmful for all of us. It is an important book, raw and simple enough that you can’t help but feel it deeply – James Rebanks, author of English Pastoral

Monica Potts is a senior politics reporter for FiveThirtyEight. Her previous work has appeared in The New York Times, the Atlantic, NPR, and The New Republic, among other publications. She has been a New America Fellow and a senior writer with American Prospect magazine.