Nonfiction Review: Janesville

Once again, I was proven wrong! As has happened so many times before, one of my book groups chose a book I was not interested in reading, but once I started it, I ended up really enjoying it. This time, the book was Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein, a nonfiction account of a town in Wisconsin and what happened to it after a huge GM plant shut down.

Janesville was a vibrant, prosperous town in rural Wisconsin, with a GM plant at the center of its history and its present. GM started the plant in February 1923, and the assembly plant continued to run for over 80 years. It grew to occupy 4.8 million square feet and employed more than seven thousand people at its peak. And on December 23, 2008, the last vehicle rolled off its assembly line. The book goes back to review a bit of the history of the Janesville plant and the town, but most of it deals with what happened after the GM plant closed. The author tells this story through a number of local residents, mostly people who worked at the plant for years and suddenly found themselves unemployed but also some of the people who tried to help the out-of-work GMers. The people highlighted in these stories all took different paths. A few found other jobs, though over the years, GM had become an integral part of the economy and other companies that supplied goods or services to the plant went out of business or had to lay off workers when the plant closed. Some went to the local community college to take advantage of retraining incentives, offered through grants and other resources. Others couldn't take the sudden pay cut and agreed to a transfer to a different GM plant, which meant lonely weekdays and very long commutes every weekend to see their families. Many families found themselves on the receiving end of charity and food drives for the first time in their lives. The effects of the plant closing were far-reaching and long-lasting, and the author digs deep into the reasons why the town wasn't able to simply rebound after such a devastating change. She not only looks at economic factors but also political and societal factors and takes a sympathetic look at the real people caught in this no-win situation.

Despite my misgivings and expectation of a dry account, I was immediately pulled into this fascinating, heartbreaking story. The author did a tremendous amount of research and talked to not only the plant's workers but others in the community, including bankers, leaders of the local college, politicians, and more. She very effectively shows the complexity and intricacy of all of these people and systems in town and makes it clear that there are no easy answers. And by zeroing in on individual people and real families (not just employees but spouses and kids, too), she shares a deep sense of empathy and insight into their limited choices and the--often sad--outcomes. By the end of the book, five years after the plant closed, some people have rebounded or found new paths for themselves, but many have not. As the subtitle says, this is not just the story of a single, unique town, but an American story of similar towns and situations across the nation. The book is very well-written and immersive and led to some great discussions in our book group.

297 pages, Simon & Schuster

Reading Challenges: Janesville by Amy Goldstein counted for:

January's Monthly Motif (new-to-me author)

J in the Alphabet Soup Challenge

My first nonfiction book for the Nonfiction Reader Challenge, AND it fit into the category of Economics.

Diversity Challenge

Wisconsin in the Literary Escapes Challenge

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