For years, Beth Macy has chronicled the evils tarnishing and annihilating the fabric of our American society: addiction in DOPESICK and RAISING LAZARUS, offshoring in FACTORY MAN, and much more in her career as a journalist. In PAPER GIRL, she turns her analytical, compassionate gaze on her most personal subject yet: herself. Macy dovetails her upbringing with the much more modern story of her hometown of Urbana, Ohio. Once a proud stop on the Underground Railroad, it is now a bastion of far-right extremism and conspiracy theories. 

Growing up in Urbana in the '70s and ’80s, Macy was often the poorest student in her class. Born to a hardworking, frugal woman and an abusive, alcoholic father, she was able to thrive thanks to her close-knit community. Whether it was classmates’ mothers who remembered to make her an extra sandwich, librarians who encouraged her love of reading, or educators who foisted scholarship applications upon her, she always benefited from the people around her. It was their pervading belief that education was the ticket out for smart young people like Macy --- not just out of Urbana or even her family, but out of the generational cycle of poverty and abuse.

Macy was only able to attend college, Bowling Green State University, thanks to a Pell Grant --- a scholarship that, in 1982, covered her entire education but now covers just a pithy 30 percent of a student's tuition. Still, Macy and her mother, to whom the book is both an ode and a love letter, knew that while the distance would hurt them, and she may never return to her hometown, education would be the key to her stability. Having worked as her town’s paper girl for most of her young adult life, she often felt that everyone was behind her, cheering for her, as Urbana took great pride in its most ambitious kids. So she wonders, “How does a community lose contact with its faith in schools? And what happens when it does?”

"Perfect for anyone trying to understand our nation’s divide on a human rather than a national level, and especially for educators and advocates, PAPER GIRL is an astounding work from an author whose compassion and curiosity knows no bounds."

Macy interviews several residents both past and present about their experiences in the town and its changing identity. Most central in her narrative is Silas James. A 2023 graduate of Urbana High School, Silas stood out among his classmates for his focused demeanor, which catapulted him to the school band’s coveted position of drum major. But he also was weighed down by a lifetime of trauma: born to parents in active addiction, homeless during long stretches of his high school years, separated from his younger siblings who had been placed in the foster care system at various points, and battling his own gender dysphoria (Silas is trans). For the years preceding his graduation, teachers, counselors and the school’s band director extended tremendous support to him, sometimes even in the form of cash donations and rooms in which to sleep.

Given the amazing tenacity of this young man --- and the monumental support he received from members of his community --- it should be shocking that he became a college dropout before the end of the first week of his first semester. The cause? A simple lack of reliable transportation.

The Urbana that Macy knew in her youth supported its citizens and welcomed jobs. Thanks to a robust local paper (the very one she grew up delivering), they prioritized community, often profiling local businesses and causes, humanizing its citizens to one another. However, due to the fall of journalism, small towns like Urbana have turned to national publications that highlight crime and violence statistics in an effort to sell, displacing or even erasing stories of everyday people largely doing good.

In Macy’s hometown, this has culminated in a red wave that welcomes in bigoted, xenophobic sentiments about immigrants and people of color. Intentionally or not, they have made room for conspiracy theorists, red pills and QAnon. In Macy’s own life, classmates who she once regarded as wildly liberal have become distrustful of both the government and the media, turning instead to YouTubers whose grasp of the news --- let alone national or foreign policy --- is flimsy at best. But true to her journalistic roots, she doesn’t write PAPER GIRL to embarrass or demonize the converted. She wants to understand why they feel so ignored, so willing to turn to these outlandish accounts.

The results of Macy’s investigation are sobering. In exploring the effects of higher education, she learns that even just living near a higher-earning person who has attained a bachelor’s degree can increase the health, happiness and educational awareness of a rural person who has not. A college degree is the single most important factor protecting against “deaths of despair” such as addiction, poverty and hopelessness, not to mention its correlation to a longer lifespan. (It is important to note that Macy also champions trade schools and other forms of education.)

The facts are staggering and undeniable, yet politicians from both parties have strayed from their support of higher education, along with the systems and policies that allow students to even get there. Macy contends that the American government has stopped thinking of higher education as a public good, shifting its place instead to one of elitism. It’s a notion that both shames and scares rural people, thanks to our nation’s lack of early childhood support. These feelings require a target --- something more specific than “government,” “school” or “media” --- to hate. In Urbana, like in many small, rural towns across America, that has become the left and all that it champions: people of color, women and LGBTQIA+ people. “In our family’s case,” Macy writes, “that someone might turn out to be me.” 

As PAPER GIRL is a memoir, Macy pairs her investigation of the loss of a small-town community and hope with her own story, which today means difficult conversations with her Trump-supporting, evangelical relatives who speak fondly of her gay son while also calling his marriage an abomination. She tries to maintain an air of respect and compassion in interviewing them, though even with her background in “trauma-informed advice,” she often loses her cool. But it is this unflinching, unpretentious honesty that cements Macy as one of our nation’s last truth-tellers.

Perfect for anyone trying to understand our nation’s divide on a human rather than a national level, and especially for educators and advocates, PAPER GIRL is an astounding work from an author whose compassion and curiosity knows no bounds.