Friendship by the Book – The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women & a Forty-Year Friendship
The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women & a Forty-Year Friendship by Jeffrey Zaslow tells the remarkable story of the 40-year friendship of a circle of eleven female friends.
The tale chronicles more than the experience of coming of age in the midwest—it offers universal insights on growing up, living a life, and facing the sobering challenges faced by grown-ups, which often include: marriage, divorce, raising a family, balancing life and work, and coping with serious illness and death among family members and close friends.
The narrative pays homage to the significant role that friendship can play in the course of women’s lives.
The “girls,” who all met as children in the “corn-and-college” town of Ames, Iowa, are introduced in photographs with short bios at the beginning of the book. As the reader turns the pages of The Girls from Ames, however, each woman develops a textured persona as Zaslow brilliantly weaves together their individual and collective stories through interviews, letters, photographs, scrapbooks, news clips, and diaries. Their long friendship as a group has enabled the girls from Ames to piece together and preserve the anecdotes that comprise their lives individually.
This compelling and beautifully written non-fiction book is destined to become a classic in the female friendship literature. Zaslow’s last book, co-authored with Randy Pausch, was the best-selling book The Last Lecture.
‘Friendship by the Book’ is an occasional series of posts on this blog about books that offer friendship lessons. To read other posts in the series, use the search function on the right side of the page.
Category: OTHER ADVICE
Hey friend thanks for introducing this book about story of women & friendship. This author’s work is really appreciable as this is destined to be a part of female friendship literature. Now a days friendship plays very important role in our life & many thanks to you as presenting short review about this book I will definitely going to read this one.
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Best,
Irene
tks for the effort you put in here I appreciate it!
I grew up in Iowa not far from Ames and related so much to these amazing women–including their terrible hairstyles in the ’70s! I loved the book and did a little article on it in the May issue of Ladies’ Home Journal–page 14, Cheers to friendship!!