Is there hope in rural America? Or is it a place in decline that young people just want to flee?

Author Gigi Georges traveled to Washington County in Maine, the remote easternmost county in America, to explore the hopes, dreams and hardships of five young women in high school. Washington County suffers from the problems plaguing many pockets of rural America. It has among the highest per capita rates of opioid overdose in the country. The families of the girls experience drug addiction and domestic violence. But the girls also revel in the thrill of being small town sports standouts in basketball and softball.

Georges tells the story of these five Maine girls in her new book, Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America. As the girls finish high school, they pursue their dreams. One becomes a lobster fisherman, while another studies to become a speech pathologist so she can help children in her home community. Yet another heads off to Yale University.

Georges insists that the stories of these Maine girls are a counter-narrative to the downbeat tales of rural life told in bestselling books such as Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance, who is expected to announce this week that he is running for the U.S. Senate in Ohio. Georges worked in the White House as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton and has a home near Acadia National Park, just an hour drive from Washington County. She spent four years following the girls who she profiles from high school to college.

“The lived experiences of the young women I follow cut against the dominant narrative of rural America as a place of despair and hopelessness,” Georges argues. She says that the communities in rural Maine “despite many challenges, are thriving, hopeful, and optimistic.”