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As a
lifestyles columnist for
The Wall Street Journal
,
Jeffrey Zaslow
chronicles the business of living itself in "Moving
On," a column about transitions.
His
subjects have ranged from the emotional last lecture of
a 47-year-old
Carnegie Mellon University
professor dying of pancreatic cancer to "Mr.
Grandmoms" — men who are raising their
grandchildren.
But few
stories have been as rewarding, Zaslow says, as the one
behind "The Girls From Ames" (Gotham,
$26
), his new book about 11 women from a small city in
Iowa
who have maintained a deep 40-year friendship through
marriage, children, divorce, disease, death and
relocation.
"I
know there's great power in honest stories about real
people," he writes in the introduction to "The
Girls From Ames." "So, over time, I found
myself intrigued by the idea of asking one articulate
group of long-standing friends to open their hearts and
scrapbooks, to tell the complete inside story of their
friendship."
Zaslow,
51, whose book about
Carnegie Mellon
professor
Randy Pausch
, "The Last Lecture," hit No. 1 on the
New York Times
bestseller list last year, says writing about female
friendship was a different game. "Women's
friendships are more intense than men's," he says.
"I envy their friendship. I don't think I could do
it as a man."
There's
Marilyn, the earnest doctor's daughter who took few
risks and grew up to be a stay-at-home mom in
Minnesota
. There's Cathy, the sassy girl who never married and
became a makeup artist in
Los Angeles
. There's Jenny, one of the group's unofficial
archivists, the last to have a child and now an
assistant dean at the
University of Maryland School of Medicine
.
Though
the women's lives have taken different paths, their
friendship has traveled a single, 11-lane road.
Zaslow
learned about the group when one of them e-mailed him in
response to a 2006 column about friendship. He joined
the women from
Ames
, now in their 40s — all white, all but one Christian,
most born to middle-class parents — on a reunion in
North Carolina
.
Over two
years, he pored over diaries, old photos and letters, in
the process becoming an honorary member of the group.
There are
memories of first kisses, school dances, late-night
keggers in cornfields, lover affairs, fights, secret
code words still used today and the at once exhilarating
and daunting experience of growing up.
"It
was intrusive in a way. The whole thing was build on
trust," Zaslow says.
The
experience, he said, underscored research findings:
"On every front, from your mental health to
physical health to life span, close friendship is
key."
Happiness,
Zaslow says, could be as simple as a lasting friendship,
something women — and men — increasingly need in
their fast-paced, fragmented lives.
Those who
are younger than the
Ames
circle may be more apt to keep in touch via e-mail and
Facebook
than letters and land lines, but "I wouldn't say
friendship is dead," he says. "It's just
changed."
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