This book chronicles the lives of 11 girls who became friends in their youth and have maintained that friendship over 40 years and hundreds of miles. They all came together in Ames, Iowa in the 1960s with some having met as babies in the church nursery while others joined the group later in junior high and high school. There were, and are, shifting subgroups and pairings within the group so not everyone was friends with everyone else equally. It describes how the group was formed over the years and who brought who into the group and how the evolved into who they became. It follows them from their earliest years to the present and the group is still intact (minus one member) and they still view each other as best friends even though 40 years have passed and they are geographically spread across the country.
There were several things that attracted me to this book -- I loved "The Last Lecture" by this author, I am only one or two years older than the women in this book, I was born and raised in the midwest (city of 130,000 in Indiana) and one of my first friends out of college went to Iowa State in Ames, Iowa. All that combined meant I was excited to dig in and read.
For those of you who are looking for stunning insights into the meaning of life, that is not what this book delivers. It's more of a case study of these women, their lives and their friendships. I found myself totally engrossed and finished it within twenty-four hours since I couldn't put it down. What the book did for me was to make me think about my own path and life choices and the impact (or lack thereof) of childhood friends and wonder how some friendships stay intact while others fade. Even though there are many parallels between these girls and me, I found many differences as well -- they were much "wilder" than my group of friends was during the teen years and my group of friends did not stay together, not even Christmas cards. It really made me contemplate why some women's friendships survive and some don't. There is also some good research shared by the author about women's friendships and when they are likely to pull apart, how they compare to men's friendships, and correlation betweeen friendships and overall health.
I found this book to be interesting and causing personal reflection and introspection -- who could ask for more?
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