The Girls from Ames

A Remarkable Tale of Female Friendships

Jeffrey Zaslow may seem like an unlikely candidate for writing a moving history of the friendship of a group of women from Iowa over the last forty years—he is, after all, male—but he does a masterful job of sharing this compelling story. Maybe it’s because he’s male (and can therefore tell it from the vantage point of outside-looking-in), or maybe it’s because of his prior experience in helping to shape a powerful message into book form (he co-authored The New York Times bestseller The Last Lecture with Randy Pausch), but whatever the reason, Zaslow introduces us to the girls from Ames and then inserts each one of them into our hearts.

This is not a story about flowers and rainbows and perfection and happy endings. This is a story about real people, with real foibles, real heartbreaks, and how their bonds with one another have buoyed them through the years. It’s about how women need other women to thrive, and how friendships don’t have to be perfect to be just right. Forty years after they met as kids in Ames, these women are still every inch a tribe.

I devoured this book in the course of a weekend, cried over it more than once, and then recommended it to every woman I love. You will, too.

• The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship (Hardcover)

• “After reading a particularly moving chapter, I sat down with my own 9-year-old daughter to talk to her about the importance of friendship in her life.” -Tara Parker-Pope, New York Times On Health columnist

• Author: Jeffrey Zaslow

• 297 pages

• Publisher: Gotham (April 21, 2009)