I picked this up at the library thinking it was fiction, however, it is the true story of a 11 girls from Ames, Iowa who became close friends in elementary school and despite the fact they are spread out all over the country are still extremely close friends in their mid-forties. Interspersed with the details of their lives are passages about studies which show that a close group of female friends is one of the contributing factors to being healthy, happy and living a long time at least for women (doesn't seem to matter for men whose friendships are of an entirley different matter). Marriages even work better because women have someone other than their husbands to vent to and for emotional support, which again, we know women are better at than men. It also seemed to be important that these be very long term friendships not ones made in adulthood. What depressed me reading all this was that I had such a group of girlfriends in elementary school and I can well imagine we would have continued that way through high school and on til today. In fact, I've reconnected with some of them via email and facebook in the last year. However, at the end of my 7th grade yeare we moved and then I changed schools every year or two until college so was never able to reestablish friendships. Oh well, one more thing to blame my parents for... (just kidding sort of).