Welcome to Litsy!

A difficult story with a hopeful/happy ending.

This memoir is something else! The author was raised by two very mentally ill parents and was helping her dad deal drugs when she was a preschooler.

Unbelievable. Powerful. Well told. Well-written.

A lot of gasping out loud and laughing while I listened to this, polar extremes for this mind blowing memoir. Dana grew up in rural Indiana with two parents who had mental illness and a drug trafficking business. Her dad put her to work when she go kicked out of preschool cutting up weed for dine bags and acting as a lookout when he did business 🤦🏻‍♀️

Some memoirs make you say, “Thank God I didn‘t grow up this way.” Trent is raised by a paranoid schizophrenic drug dealer dad and a narcissistic dependent personality mother. Eventually her parents divorce and live in two different states, with Trent having to experience both parents‘ illnesses. It‘s a quick read and the last quarter feels rushed but it‘s definitely a vision of hope that she made it through her childhood. (Photo: my Main Street)

“A preschooler‘s hands are the perfect size for razor blades. I know because I helped my schizophrenic drug-lord father chop, drop, and traffic kilos in kiddie carnival-ride carcasses across flyover country.”

What a way to start a memoir.

Wow. This one will stay with me for a while.

If you were engrossed with Educated (Tara Westover) Between Two Trailers will be equally as powerful.

4⭐️/5⭐️

J Dana Trent grew up between two trailers, one in Indiana, the homeplace of her father and the other in rural North Carolina, her mother‘s home. Though her parents started out together raising their daughter, things quickly became untethered between the couple, as both suffer from mental illness.
This surely is dysfunctional—the book begins with Dana‘s memories at age 4, preparing drugs to sell for her father‘s employer. But hopeful in the end.

Dana‘s parents met in a mental hospital, and she was helping her dad bag drugs when she was barely out of diapers. She became overly attentive to her mother‘s frequent mood swings making sure never to rile her up.

This was a fantastic dysfunctional family memoir that addressed mental illness, addiction, and poverty. Dana treats her parents with empathy while holding them accountable for the difficult parts of her childhood.