Dave Davies

Dave Davies, Jr.

She followed with two books on the opioid crisis and grassroots efforts to fight it.

Her latest book continues her focus on working people in rural America, but this time through the lens of a personal memoir.

Macy grew up in the town of Urbana, Ohio, where she says she was one of the poorest kids in her class and felt it.

She writes that her childhood had its share of chaos, addiction, and utility cutoff notices, but that she managed to escape poverty and forge a career in journalism because she got to college and completed a four-year degree.

Her book is a deeply reported look at the Urbana she left.

where the factory jobs have largely disappeared, creating economic pressures that lead to family dysfunction while social supports and educational opportunities have eroded.

She found it hard to communicate with family members and old friends who've embraced conspiratorial thinking.

The more time she spent in her hometown, Macy writes, the more she recognized forces that were turning the community she loved into a poorer, sicker, angrier, and less educated place.

Beth Macy spent many years reporting for the Roanoke Virginia Times and has written four previous books, three of which were New York Times bestsellers.

Her book Dope Sick was made into a Peabody and Emmy Award-winning Hulu series on which Macy served as an executive producer and co-writer.

Macy's new book is Paper Girl, a memoir of home and family in a fractured America.

Well, Beth Macy, welcome back to Fresh Air.

You know, most of your books have been these deeply reported studies on the impacts of many things on working people, deindustrialization, the opioid epidemic.

This book is also deeply reported.

It's not just your memories, but it's a look at your family and the community you grew up in and left and how they've changed.

What decided to make you take on this project, which is more personal?

And it took you a couple, three years to do this, right?

Okay, so let's talk about this.

You grew up in Urbana, Ohio.