BETWEEN TWO TRAILERS

A potent memoir about a young woman’s escape from a toxic childhood.

Trent, author of One Breath at a Time and Dessert First, begins this harrowing account with razor blades. “A Preschooler’s hands are the perfect size for razor blades,” she writes. “I know because I helped my schizophrenic drug-lord father chop, drop, and traffic kilos in kiddie carnival-ride carcasses across flyover country.” The author never shies away from the uncomfortable, but instead leans into her own vulnerability as she analyzes her past while attempting to find peace in the present. Growing up with parents who suffered from paralyzing mental illness meant that Trent’s protection was not a priority. Rather, she was used as a pair of useful hands. Weaving poignant lyricism with deeply personal and dark stories of her attempts to release herself from the chains of her past, Trent brings readers directly into her chaotic, dangerous childhood, describing how she used her nimble fingers to pack marijuana for her father, “a regional manager for a trafficking front,” while shielding herself from her volatile mother. Although Trent was assisting in her father’s illegal pursuits, eventually, her mother snatched her from her trailer home in Indiana and took her to North Carolina, where she continued to struggle with poverty and her mother’s mental instability. “My father’s mental unsteadiness was obvious and outward,” she writes. “You could look at him and guess how loud the carnival barkers in his head were. But [my mother’s] ups and downs were a crapshoot. As soon as I thought I’d nailed it like a game of gin rummy, she switched strategies.” As the years passed, Trent worked actively to heal and move forward with her life, graduating from Duke Divinity School and becoming a teacher of world religions.

A powerfully intimate look into the struggles of American poverty and mental illness.