“You can’t go home again” is more than a book title by Thomas Wolfe. It’s a sentiment often more true than people would like to believe.

But going home is exactly what Beth Macy did. Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America (Penguin Press, 2025) is her telling of returning to Urbana, Ohio, where she grew up in the 1970s and 1980s.

While Macy and Urbana might not be enough for you to pick up the book, the book is worth reading—or listening to, as I did.

It’s a book for today. For the political divide we are living in. For the economic, educational and rural-urban divides.

Macy escaped a crappy childhood, got a college degree, found a decent guy to marry and has had a successful career as a journalist and author.

But what allowed her to move beyond her upbringing isn’t necessarily available to subsequent generations. What the Pell Grant provided her and what it does today are drastically different.

Opportunity. That’s a big difference in what is going on today. Some have it, some don’t.

This book is personal. But it’s so much more than a memoir.

Because Macy has had a connection to so many of the people in the book for decades it’s also their stories, making this about people-community and not just one person. It’s about how we got to where we are in the United States through the stories of many connected to Urbana, Ohio.

This book helps explain how we became such a fractured society. It was a bit eye-opening at times. It makes you see the other side—whichever side you aren’t on.

One thing that really resonated with me is how the impact of not having local news affects a community as a whole and the individuals in it.

So, here’s my plea—subscribe to your local newspaper. If it’s free, send them money without them asking for it. Support your local radio and TV stations. If you are a business owner, buy an ad. Even if you don’t need more business, buy an ad thanking your customers. And don’t do this just once; make it a habit.

If more communities keep losing their news, we are all worse off and the divide only gets bigger because there is no one bringing balance to whatever the topic is.