In her upcoming memoir, Tom Hanks’ daughter is opening up about her childhood, alleging abuse perpetrated by her late mother (and Hanks’ first wife) Susan Dillingham.
“The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road” follows E.A. Hanks’ solo, cross-country journey of self-reflection, including uncovering her late mother’s past. The former Vanity Fair staffer’s memoir comes out April 8 from Simon & Schuster.
Hanks, 42, follows her mother’s diaries along the journey, discovering details “darker and more violent than she ever imagined,” the book’s description says. In an excerpt published by People, Hanks writes about her turbulent upbringing, the aftermath of her parents’ divorce and her quest to understand her mom.
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The “Forrest Gump” actor and Dillingham, who acted under the name Samantha Lewes, divorced in 1987 after nine years of marriage. Together, they shared E.A. (Elizabeth Anne) and Colin Hanks. He married actress Rita Wilson the following year. In the excerpt from “The 10,” Hanks writes that she only remembers two instances of her parents being in the same room – at Colin’s high school graduation and at hers.
“My dad was traumatized by his childhood and his family’s divorce and a revolving door of stepparents and siblings,” Hanks told People in an interview, of Tom. “The love that existed between my parents is two hurt kids trying to dig out of a well together.”
Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, Truman Theodore Hanks and Elizabeth Hanks pose on the red carpet during the Oscars arrivals at the 92nd Academy Awards in February 2020.
Dillingham died of lung cancer in 2002 at the age of 49 and struggled with mental illness and addiction. Though never diagnosed, Hanks told People she believes her mother was bipolar. According to the excerpt, Hanks lived with her mother in Sacramento but spent weekends and summers with her dad and stepmother in Los Angeles. In her early teen years, Tom gained primary custody.
“As the years went on, the backyard became so full of dog s— that you couldn’t walk around it, the house stank of smoke. The fridge was bare or full of expired food more often than not, and my mother spent more and more time in her big four-poster bed, poring over the Bible,” Hanks writes. “One night, her emotional violence became physical violence, and in the aftermath I moved to Los Angeles, right smack in the middle of the seventh grade.”
Hanks told People she was afraid to tell her dad how bad the situation became, calling herself a “protector” of her mom’s secrets. Now Tom, a novelist and writer in his own right, is supportive of her memoir, she says: “I’m equally my father’s daughter because he taught me to tell the truth and move forward.”
‘The 10’ is E.A. Hanks’ journey to the past
“The 10” is a wide-ranging memoir, covering Hanks’ time living in a van on her trip, political and sociological issues in the U.S. and the regional differences in the people she meets along the way. Hanks also tries to parse between fact and fiction in her mother’s diaries and family history, including a story about her maternal grandfather’s possible connection to a murder.
Her 2019 cross-country road trip led her to conversations with strangers that taught her “the stories we tell about where we are from cannot be divided from the stories we tell about who we are,” she wrote on Instagram.
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Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tom Hanks’ daughter shares alleged abuse by mother in memoir
