Becky's Great Book Reviews The Girls from Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow

I'm probably late to the game here, as The Girls from Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow was published in 2009 and it seems to have made quite a splash then. A good friend of mine recommended it (who happens to be in my own circle of friends much like the girls from Ames) and I'm happy she did.

I don't know what resonated the most with me: the chronicling of the power of female friendship? The nostalgia of growing up in the Midwest in the seventies much like these girls? Or the parallels to my own close circle of female friends?

The girls from Ames met sooner and gave themselves a name: The S--- Sisters (a reference to Iowa). My own circle chose the moniker The Roommates, seeing as we all shared a house off-campus at UW-Eau Claire starting from 1988. We've gotten together twice a year ever since. There are nine of us, instead of eleven. Like the Ames women, we've shared both joy and complete despair.

The male author of this work of non-fiction writes that he knows there's great power in honest stories about real people. He envies the ease with which women share their lives and how they support each other, especially as they get older. This is vital because as we all know statistically, women live longer than men. The girls in the book jokingly discuss living in a retirement community or one big house in their elder years (my group has done the same).

Their story is universal, even common. As such it can't help but resonate with any woman who has ever had a friend. Yet some of the women's stories are surprising, astounding and unique. Zaslow shines a light on each of the women's lives with interest, care, compassion and a journalist's eye for detail.

Zaslow writes, "The Ames girls haven't tracked all the scientific studies about friendship, the ones showing that having a close group of friends helps people sleep better, improve their immune systems, boost their self-esteem, stave off dementia, and actually live longer. The Ames girls just feel it in their guts". Researchers explain it like this: women's friendships are face to face. Men's friendships are side by side.

There's an old saying that goes, "You can make a new friend. You can't make an old one". I'm fortunate to have held on to a few very close childhood friends as well as the Roommates. As Women friendships are most at risk between the ages of twenty-five and forty (because of the demands of raising children and establishing careers), I count myself lucky to still have these women to lean on. My own eighty-five-year-old mother has re-connected to a group of grade school friends in the last couple decades. They picked up right where they left off. When they get together, she says it's like a "balm to her soul". Hearing about her experiences crying, laughing and drinking wine together echoes my own, as well as the experiences of the Ames women.

The Girls from Ames became a number one national bestseller for a reason. This moving story will resound with any female reader, and I give it five stars out of five.