Hillbilly Elegy

back to Jackson or send Papaw to jail.
Mamaw’s first foray into adulthood
ended in tragedy. Today I often wonder:
Without the baby, would she ever have
left Jackson? Would she have run off
with Jim Vance to foreign territory?
Mamaw’s entire life—and the trajectory
of our family—may have changed for a
baby who lived only six days.
Whatever mix of economic
opportunity and family necessity
catapulted my grandparents to Ohio, they
were there, and there was no going back.
So Papaw found a job at Armco, a large
steel company that aggressively
recruited in eastern Kentucky coal
country. Armco representatives would