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Between two trailers : a memoir / J. Dana Trent ; [foreword by Barbara Brown Taylor].

Trent, J. Dana, (author.). Taylor, Barbara Brown, (writer of foreword.).

Summary:

"An unforgettable memoir about a girl who escapes her childhood as a preschool drug dealer to earn a divinity degree from Duke University-and then realizes she must confront her past to truly find her way home. "Home, it turns out, is where the war is. It's also where the healing begins." Born to drug-dealing parents in rural Indiana, Dana Trent is 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, where she watches TV evangelist Tammy Faye on repeat. Growing up, Dana tries to be the daughter each of her parents wants: a drug lord's heir and a debutante minister. 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 desire to be a polite southern girl, hiding her homelife of drugs and parents whose severe mental illnesses have left them debilitated. Dana imagines that her hidden Indiana life is finally behind her after she graduates from Duke University and becomes a professor and an ambivalent female Southern Baptist minister. But Dana was a child of the drug trade. Though she escapes flyover country, she realizes that she will never be able to escape her father's legacy, and that her childhood secrets have kept her from making peace with the people and places that shaped her. Ultimately, Dana finds that no one can really "make it" until they return to where their story began: home"-- Provided by publisher.

Record details

  • ISBN: 0593444078
  • ISBN: 9780593444078
  • Physical Description: xviii, 231 pages : illustration ; 22 cm
  • Edition: First edition.
  • Publisher: New York : Convergent, [2024]

Content descriptions

Formatted Contents Note:
Foreword -- Preface: story shrapnel -- Author's note -- Part I. Razorblades and preschoolers ; My first drug drop ; Lewman crazy ; Carnival captivations ; The notebook method of divorce ; Southern shrinking ; King, unhinged -- Part II. North Carolina is my home ; Hoosier summers ; Salem spirits and blue devils ; The death of a king ; Vermillion.
Subject: Trent, J. Dana > Childhood and youth.
Children of drug addicts > United States.
Drug addicts > Family relationships > United States.
Women clergy > United States.
Genre: Autobiographies.

Available copies

  • 15 of 27 copies available at NC Cardinal. (Show)
  • 0 of 1 copy available at Onslow County Public Library.

Holds

  • 8 current holds with 27 total copies.
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