A Book Worth Reading (Tell His Story)

 I don't do this often, but I have a book recommendation for you...J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy.

Now, if you're a committed Democrat, please don't turn away, because even though the author is the Republican vice-presidential nominee, this isn't a political book.

It's a meditation on what it was like to grow up in the decaying industrial Midwest, a place ignored by both political parties. Vance describes the challenges his family faced, and how they often failed their children, and themselves. He tells, with painful candor, of the pervading sense of hopelessness, and the scourge of drugs.

These are good people, whose parents and grandparents came down from the hills of Kentucky and West Virginia to work in the steel mills and auto plants, only to see the work sent overseas, and the towns die, vibrant Main Streets abandoned to decay in the snow and the rain and the sun and the wind.

The story isn't self-serving. He's up-front about his own inadequacies, and about the influences...his grandparents, the United States Marine Corps, and his wife... that allowed him to escape the bitter fate of friends and family.

Vance doesn't offer a menu of solutions, and recognizes that there may really be none. He just wants to represent a demographic that may be doomed.

Also, it's a demographic of which my wife's family is part.

Sylvia would offer ice cream and a hug, if she could.

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