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Home, it turns out, is where the war is. It’s also where the healing begins.
Dana Trent is only a preschooler the first time she uses a razor blade to cut up weed and fill dime bags for her schizophrenic father, King. While King struggles with his unmedicated psychosis, Dana’s mother, the Lady, a cold and self-absorbed woman whose personality disorders rule the home, guards large bricks of drugs from the safety of their squalid trailer. But when the Lady impulsively plucks Dana from the Midwest and moves the two of them south, their fresh start results in homelessness and bankruptcy. In North Carolina, Dana becomes torn between her gritty midwestern past and her newfound desire to be a polite southern girl, struggling to reconcile her shame with an ache to figure out who she is, and where she belongs.
But the past is never far behind. After persevering through childhood and eventually graduating from Duke University, Dana imagines that her hidden Indiana life is finally behind her, only to realize that running from her upbringing has kept her from making peace with the people and places that shaped her. Ultimately, Dana finds that though love for family is universally complicated, there is no shame in survival, and for those who want it, there is always a path home.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 16, 2024 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593861035
- File size: 214821 KB
- Duration: 07:27:32
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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November 27, 2023
Minister Trent (Saffron Cross) recollects in punishing detail her hardscrabble childhood in Indiana and North Carolina with mentally ill parents who roped her into the drug trade. Her father, who was known as King for his religious “visions” and the band of devoted followers who gathered to hear them, taught Trent to separate marijuana stems and seeds from “good bud” and brought her with him on drug drops at age four. Meanwhile, Trent’s mother, a Southern-born psychiatric nurse who’d been hospitalized after attempting suicide, languished in bed, depressed or high. When her parents divorced, the seven-year-old author was ripped away from her small-town Indiana trailer and brought to North Carolina, where she and her mother bounced between relatives’ homes. Eventually, Trent returned to Indiana to spend summers with her father and grandparents, a move that stirred up her mother’s jealousy: “Navigating time with my parents was a losing game of Whac-a-Mole.” Despite her destructive binge drinking and overeating, Trent managed to finish college, marry, and get ordained as a minister after graduating from Duke University Divinity School. Trent’s attempts to recover from her trauma get relatively short shrift, which makes the note of faith she concludes on (“Home, as it turns out, was there all along in my two very loving and very unconventional... parents”) feel somewhat tacked-on. Still, fans of Jeannette Walls and Tara Westover will be drawn to Trent’s blend of grit and hope. Agent: Mark Tauber, Watermark Agency. -
May 31, 2024
Minister Trent (world religions and critical thinking, Wake Technical Community Coll.; One Breath at a Time) offers a wrenching, self-narrated memoir of her childhood, growing up in a trailer in rural Indiana. With calmness and clarity, Trent describes how her father, known as "King," diagnosed with schizophrenia, trained Trent to chop marijuana and make dime bags when she was a preschooler. She also learned to be a lookout, scanning the environment for strangers and danger. King took her with him on drug drops and schooled her in self-defense tactics. Her mother, known as "the Lady," who experienced severe depression, spent her time watching evangelical TV and consuming uppers and downers. Her mother moved them to North Carolina and divorced King, but with no understanding of finances, bankruptcy, and being unhoused, hardships followed. Trent straddled the rift between her parents while trying to discover herself, realizing that her upbringing was not typical. College brought on steady drinking and eating behaviors, which she overcame. VERDICT In this stunning story of resilience and strength, Trent shares how she overcame her fraught upbringing without losing her love for her home and her family.--Joanna M. Burkhardt
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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