Trapped in Rural America

In this study group, we will read and discuss Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America by Beth Macy (Penguin Press, 2025), a deeply personal exploration of how economic change reshaped a once-thriving Midwestern town. Macy grew up in Urbana, Ohio, where Old Man Grimes and his network of local businesses provided stable jobs, civic leadership, and a clear path to the middle class. Residents owned homes, supported community institutions, and believed education would open doors. “My teachers always told me that I could find a path to the middle class.” Macy writes, “And I did. If I were born even ten years later, I would never have made it out.”  As we follow Macy’s story, our discussions will examine what happened when that economic foundation collapsed in the 1980s and 1990s—when industries moved abroad, wages stagnated, and opportunities dwindled. We will explore how declining local investment, weakened public institutions, and loss of stable work contributed to rising poverty, opioid addiction, and reduced access to higher education, and consider Macy’s central question: How does a community lose its path to the middle class—and what might it take to rebuild one?