The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship [Hardcover]

Jeffrey Zaslow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 21, 2009

The instant New York Times bestseller, now in paperback: a moving tribute to female friendships, with the inspiring story of eleven girls and the ten women they became, from the coauthor of the million-copy bestseller The Last Lecture

As children, they formed a special bond, growing up in the small town of Ames, Iowa. As young women, they moved to eighth different states, yet they managed to maintain an extraordinary friendship that would carry them through college and careers, marriage and motherhood, dating and divorce, the death of a child, and the mysterious death of the eleventh member of their group. Capturing their remarkable story, The Girls from Ames is a testament to the enduring, deep bonds of women as they experience life's challenges, and the power of friendship to overcome even the most daunting odds.

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. The Girls from Ames 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. With both universal events and deeply personal moments, it's a book that every woman will relate to and be inspired by.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jeffrey Zaslow is a Wall Street Journal columnist and, with Randy Pausch, coauthor of The Last Lecture, the #1 New York Times bestseller now translated into forty-one 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, Sherry, and daughters Jordan, Alex, and Eden.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Gotham; First Edition edition (April 21, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592404456
• ISBN-13: 978-1592404452
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (137 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #129,887 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #61 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Regional U.S. > Midwest

More About the Author

Through his Wall Street Journal column and bestselling books, Jeffrey Zaslow has told the stories of some of the most inspirational people of our time.

Jeff is best known for The Last Lecture, written with Randy Pausch, which has been translated into 48 languages, and was #1 on best-seller lists worldwide. Five million copies have been sold in English alone, and the book remained on The New York Times best-seller list for more than 112 weeks.

Jeff's latest book, The Magic Room: A story about the love we wish for our daughters, was published in January 2012. The nonfiction narrative is set at a small-town Michigan bridal shop, and looks at the lives of a handful of brides (and their parents) who've journeyed to the store's "Magic Room." Details at www.magicroombook.com

In 2011, Jeff collaborated with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, veteran astronaut Mark Kelly, on their memoir, GABBY: A Story of Courage and Hope. The book received a great deal of attention, including a cover story in People magazine, and an hour-long ABC TV special hosted by Diane Sawyer. GABBY debuted near the top of the New York Times bestseller lists for both hardcovers and e-books.

Jeff's 2009 book about female friendship, The Girls From Ames, spent 26 weeks on The Times list, rising to #3. People magazine named it one of the "Ten Best Books of the Year." Lifetime Television is adapting the book for a movie.

Also in 2009, Jeff coauthored Highest Duty, the memoir of Capt. "Sully" Sullenberger, who famously landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River. Highest Duty debuted at # 3 on The New York Times list.

Jeff's Wall Street Journal column focuses on life transitions and often attracts wide media interest. That was certainly the case in September 2007, after he attended the final lecture of Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch. Jeff's column about the talk sparked a worldwide phenomenon. Millions of people viewed footage of the lecture. Intense media coverage included The Oprah Winfrey Show and an ABC special.


Jeff is drawn to the topics he writes about because he has created a beat unlike most others in journalism. While The Wall Street Journal covers the heart of the financial world, Jeff tends to the hearts of its readers.

The National Society of Newspaper Columnists twice named him the best columnist in a newspaper with more than 100,000 circulation. In 2008, he received the Distinguished Column Writing Award from the New York Newspaper Publishers Association.

Jeff's TV appearances have included The Tonight Show, Oprah, Larry King Live, 60 Minutes, The Today Show and Good Morning America.

Jeff first worked at the Journal from 1983 to 1987, when he wrote about a competition to replace Ann Landers at the Chicago Sun-Times. He entered to get an angle for his story, and won the job over 12,000 applicants. He worked at the Sun-Times from 1987 to 2001, and was also a columnist for USA Weekend, the Sunday supplement in 510 newspapers.

In 2000, Jeff received the Will Rogers Humanitarian Award for using his column to help 47,000 disadvantaged children. For 12 years, he hosted an annual singles party for charity, Zazz Bash, which drew 7,000 readers a year and resulted in 78 marriages.

A Philadelphia native, Jeff is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon, where he majored in creative writing. His wife, Sherry Margolis, is a TV news anchor with Fox 2 in Detroit. They have three daughters: Jordan, Alex and Eden.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

105 of 113 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 40 years of friendship, March 10, 2009

By 

Marilyn T. Schoberg (Elkhorn, WI USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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

(What's this?)

What first drew me to this book is the fact that I had cousins in Ames, and all through my growing up years, spent time there. It was fun to see the names of places I recognized and, upon contacting my relatives, finding out that they were friends with some of the families mentioned in the book. The personal connection aside, I found the book well done and very interesting. The author writes a column for the Wall Street Journal called "Moving On", and one piece dealing with turning points in women's friendships yielded an e-mail from one of the "Ames Girls", telling about their group of 11 who had remained friends since childhood until now, in their forties. He decided to do a year-long study of that friendship which results in this book. We get a good look at each of the girls as they're growing up and as they become adults. Amazing to me is the diversity of these women and the fact that they could all stay close for this many years. That's the beauty of the book, and of the friendship. In spite of different life philosophies, political leanings, and careers, through thick and thin (and there are plenty of life crises among them), they are always there for each other, regardless of geographic distances. Whether physically, emotionally, or both, they are there. The author does a bit of comparison with men and their close friendships, and how they differ so completely from women's friendships. But this doesn't come off as a "study". It comes off as an accolade to these women, who have been so blessed to have each other.

129 of 144 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Book I Really Wanted to Like, March 30, 2009

By 

Faye Quam Heimerl - Book Editor "Quam Editorial" (Westminster, CO) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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

(What's this?)

In THE GIRLS FROM AMES, author Jeffrey Zaslow documents the backgrounds of a group of friends from Ames, Iowa. What's remarkable is the group's size, 11, and its longevity, more than 40 years. But what's not remarkable is the book. Zaslow manages to wring 316 pages of writing from interviews with, and conversations between, these women, and it reads like it has been wrung--from a dull topic. The women's relationships just aren't that interesting. Why? Is it the author's at-a-distance documentary style? The book's mundane topics? My thwarted expectation that I'd learn something new about friendship? I don't know. And it's not because I don't greatly value my own longstanding friendships. I rely on them.

Who might enjoy THE GIRLS FROM AMES? Men and women who live/have lived in Ames, people who enjoy reading about aspects of the agricultural Midwest, women's groups, high school classmates who are still friends several years after graduation.

41 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A story bigger and better than the book, April 30, 2009

By 

L. Tabak (Madison WI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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

When I heard the author and two of the subjects on NPR I immediately bought a copy, wondering if I would know any of the "girls." I was living and working in Ames in 1981 when their class graduated from Ames High, and sure enough, I immediately recognized one of the main characters, and had connections with the families of others. Reading the book was much like the odd dislocation that Walker Percy describes in The Moviegoer when surprised by a scene on screen that is familiar in real life. That said, Zaslow is a columnist and this is a story that needs the skills of a novelist. You can't build character by simply piling on anecdotes, and he is hampered by a lack of source material (and by an inexcusable lack of research--no evidence that he visited their old haunts or even read their yearbook), an inability to recreate a sense of place or time, what appears to be cursory interviews with a broad number of sources, and his core experience, a reunion with the main subjects in North Carolina, where there is no connection with their common roots. While the cast is not exactly War and Peace, it is difficult to keep the characters straight, an experience not aided by the author's determination to use just first names. Was Kelly the feisty one or the sassy one--no that was Cathy, or was it Karen or Karla? The fuzzy pics on the cheesy paper used in the original edition are not a plus. You do learn a bit -- who knew that Brad Pitt was "a pleasant-but-not-especially attractive journalism major at the University of Missouri"? Or that Hollywood hair dressers have a code of not gossiping about their clients--except when someone is writing a book about the friendships of 11 Iowa girls and apparently needs to spice up the flagging narration with a flurry of name dropping. This is not to take away anything from the 11 original friends or their admirably deep and lengthy friendships, but if you're looking for an equally deep explanation of such relationships, you'll not find it here.