Hillbilly Elegy

also very firm and an outsider—even the
best stepparents take some getting used
to. In Kentucky, among his people and
with plenty of space, Dad could be
himself. I felt the same way. There were
two kinds of people: those whom I’d
behave around because I wanted to
impress them and those whom I’d
behave around to avoid embarrassing
myself. The latter people were
outsiders, and Kentucky had none of
them.
In many ways, Dad’s life project
was rebuilding for himself what he once
had in Kentucky. When I first visited
him, Dad had a modest house on a
beautiful plot of land, fourteen acres in