The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship (review)

In June 2003, Wall Street Journal columnist Jeffrey Zaslow's feature on female friendship generated an overwhelming response from readers eager to share anecdotes with the author. Several years later, when Zaslow decided to expand the column into a full-length book, he turned to an e-mail from Jenny. She wrote that she was part of a clique of eleven women who had remained close friends for many years. The group had known each other since their childhoods in Ames, Iowa, in the 1960s. In their teens, the girls bonded over boys and after school jobs (detasseling corn and scooping ice-cream at Boyd's). Group cohesion was more difficult when they went their separate ways attending college, beginning careers, and building families in different cities around the country. They continued, however, to correspond over the phone and through letters, sharing the ups and downs of marriage and child rearing. In the end, and between them, the group had twenty-one children. When Christie, the first born, was diagnosed with leukemia at age fourteen, the girls were devastated and rallied in support of Karla, her mother and their friend. In fact, by their thirties and forties, all the girls had "endured grief that would inform the rest of their lives" (192). Today members counsel each other as they struggle with divorce, illness, and the realization that their lives may not have turned out exactly as they had hoped. Mostly, the girls find strength and reassurance through the collective memories of their hometown. According to Zaslow, they "loved the place then and love it more now" (3). Overall, Ames provides continuity because it allows the girls to connect the present to the past.

The book is organized around a reunion at Angela's house in North Carolina (the girls take turns hosting this annual event), which Zaslow attends, immersing himself inside the group for four days. Less a participant than an observer, he is privy to the girls' memories of their forty-plus years together. The reunion is where they catch up on the present and, more importantly, bond over a shared past. In fact, the majority of their time is spent reminiscing and reviewing. Now in their mid-forties, the Ames girls, like other women their age, find themselves at a crossroads trying to figure out who they are, trusting that "one path to self-reflection comes from getting in touch with who they were" (101). According to Zaslow, their relationships with each other encompass "who they are, who they were, how they viewed themselves long ago and how they see themselves now. And on all of these fronts, so much reveals itself through the prism of Ames, Iowa" (103). For example, they believe that many of their present-day values are a testament to the small, rural, university town where they grew up. They pride themselves on having both a strong work ethic and an intense sense of community. As a group, they also place importance on education.

At the reunion, the girls are eager to share their diaries, photos, and scrapbooks with Zaslow. They impart personal correspondence to him, such as notes passed in classes, letters, and, more recently, e-mails. Among the most treasured letters are those from Sheila, bundled together and tied with a ribbon. Sheila died in her twenties and therefore is the "Ames girl who never became a woman" (61). In addition to her letters, she's remembered through the many photos that surface during the reunion. Snapshots are revealing in another way. Sally's absence from many of them exposes her tenuous relationship with the group; the photos are a physical reminder of her outsider status. The varying ways in which the girls behave offer even more material for Zaslow to examine. For example, Karla is aloof during much of the reunion because she feels guilty being away from her family: Zaslow draws...