About
Get the Summary of Beth Macy's Paper Girl in 20 minutes. Beth Macy grew up in Urbana, Ohio. Though her family struggled with poverty and addiction, the town offered strong public schools and a sense of shared responsibility. Macy escaped her hometown on a Pell Grant and built a successful career in journalism. Forty years later, in 2020, Macy returned to find a community transformed-economically strained, awash in conspiracy, and stripped of the local journalism that once held it together. As mental health crises deepened and politics turned neighbors against one another, Macy set out to understand what had changed. In Paper Girl (2025), she explores the profound decline of her hometown, telling the stories of young people struggling to survive. By tracing the unraveling of one town, Macy illuminates the forces pulling at the nation and searches for what might still bind us.