Northfield resident Kelly Zwagerman is one of the Girls from Ames.
”I know women will see themselves and their friends in this book. They’ll be reminded of how they’re not alone in the world, and I’m betting that the stories here will be comforting, bringing back their own memories. I’m sure some women reading the book will think of friends they have lost touch with, and maybe it will encourage them to reconnect. I also assume some women, who feel they never won the friend lottery, will feel a bit envious of what the Ames girls have. I hope these women will be inspired by what they read, and perhaps they will find meaningful friendships down the road.”
– Author Jeffrey Zaslow
Meet the Ames Girls: eleven childhood friends who formed a special bond growing up in Ames, Iowa. As young women, they moved to eight different states, yet managed to maintain an enduring friendship that would carry them through college and careers, marriage and motherhood, dating and divorce, a child’s illness and the mysterious death of one member of their group. Capturing their remarkable story, The Girls from Ames is a testament to the deep bonds of women as they experience life’s joys and challenges — and the power of friendship to triumph over heartbreak and unexpected tragedy.
The girls, now in their forties, have a lifetime of memories in common, some evocative of their generation and some that will resonate with any woman who has ever had a friend. Photograph by photograph, recollection by recollection, occasionally with tears and often with great laughter, their sweeping and moving story is shared by Jeffrey Zaslow, Wall Street Journal columnist, as he attempts to define the matchless bonds of female friendship. It demonstrates how close female relationships can shape every aspect of women’s lives – their sense of themselves, their choice of men, their need for validation, their relationships with their mothers, their dreams for their daughters – and reveals how such friendships thrive, rewarding those who have committed to them.
Because they came of age in an era of unprecedented opportunity for women, their story also examines how feminism’s major breakthroughs have been seized or wasted, and captures what it was like to be girls in the sixties, to come of age in the seventies and eighties, to be new mothers in the nineties, and enter middle age in the new millennium-and how close female relationships can shape every aspect of women’s lives. With both universal events and deeply personal moments, it’s a book that every woman will relate to and be inspired by.
The Girls from Ames is the story of a group of ordinary women who built an extraordinary friendship. With both universal insights and deeply personal moments, it is a book that every woman will relate to and be inspired by.
About the Author
Jeffrey Zaslow is a Wall Street Journal columnist and coauthor, with Randy Pausch, of The Last Lecture, the #1 New York Times bestseller now translated into 41 languages. Zaslow attended Dr. Pausch’s famous lecture and wrote the story that sparked worldwide interest in it. The Girls From Ames also grew out of one of Zaslow’s columns. He lives in suburban Detroit with his wife and three daughters.
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Bestselling novelist Jane Hamilton makes her debut at Grand Central Publishing with this funny, sexy, provocative, and dark satirical novel that turns the chick-lit genre upside-down.
JANE HAMILTON is the author of The Book of Ruth, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for first fiction, and A Map of the World, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Both The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World have been selections of Oprah’s Book Club. Her last novel, When Madeline Was Young, was a Washington Post Best Book of 2006. She lives and writes in an orchard farmhouse in Wisconsin.
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surrounded by a thriving agricultural community. Family farms were the backbone of the local economy, and the small businesses lining the town’s main street provided the essentials of daily life. Since that time the small towns of the Great Northern Plains have witnessed severe economic decline as family farms have gradually been replaced by industrial agriculture.
DEAN HULSE is a freelance writer and an activist for issues of land use, renewable energy, and sustainable agriculture. He lives in Fargo, North Dakota.
It’s the same old story. David vs. Goliath. Big vs. little. New school vs. old school. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The New York Times has published 
Mike Perry’s latest book Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs and Parenting has arrived at 
JETTA CARLETON was born in 1913 in Holden, Missouri (population about 500), and earned a Master’s degree at the University of Missouri. She worked as a schoolteacher, a radio copywriter in Kansas City, and, for eight years, as a television copywriter for New York City advertising agencies. She and her husband settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they ran a small publishing house, Lightning Tree. She died in 1999. THE MOONFLOWER VINE is her only published novel. Author photo Credit: copyright, William G. Berkeley
ROBERT GOOLRICK lives in New York City. His inspiration for A RELIABLE WIFE comes in part from the book Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy. Goolrick is also the author of the critically acclaimed memoir The End of the World as We Know It. Author’s website: 
