Hillbilly Elegy

shocking that he “didn’t want me
anymore,” as Mom and Mamaw told me.
He had a new wife, with two small
children, and I’d been replaced.
Bob Hamel, my stepdad and eventual
adoptive father, was a good guy in that
he treated Lindsay and me kindly.
Mamaw didn’t care much for him. “He’s
a toothless fucking retard,” she’d tell
Mom, I suspect for reasons of class and
culture: Mamaw had done everything in
her power to be better than the
circumstances of her birth. Though she
was hardly rich, she wanted her kids to
get an education, obtain white-collar
work, and marry well-groomed middle-
class folks—people, in other words,