Hillbilly Elegy

a hug and told me that she accepted my
apology and was glad I was okay. That
was the end of it.
Usha hadn’t learned how to fight in
the hillbilly school of hard knocks. The
first time I visited her family for
Thanksgiving, I was amazed at the lack
of drama. Usha’s mother didn’t complain
about her father behind his back. There
were no suggestions that good family
friends were liars or backstabbers, no
angry exchanges between a man’s wife
and the same man’s sister. Usha’s
parents seemed to genuinely like her
grandmother and spoke of their siblings
with love. When I asked her father about
a relatively estranged family member, I