E.A. Hanks, Tom Hanks’ only daughter, hit the open road to learn more about her mother, Susan Dillingham. Now, she’s ready to talk about it.
Her new book, The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road, details what she learned — the good and bad — about Dillingham, who died from lung cancer in 2002 at age 49.
E.A. (short for Elizabeth Anne), 43, and her older brother Colin, now 47, lived with Dillingham when she and Tom divorced in 1985 after five years of marriage. Though Dillingham was never diagnosed, E.A. believes she suffered from bipolar disorder, leading to episodes of paranoia and delusion. In one instance, she moved her two kids from Los Angeles to Sacramento without notice.
“My dad came to pick us up from school and we’re not there,” E.A. recalled in an excerpt from her book, obtained by People. “And it turns out we haven’t been there for two weeks and he has to track us down.”
At first, E.A. and Colin lived with Dillingham and saw Tom and his wife, Rita Wilson, on weekends and over the summer. (Tom and Wilson also share sons Chet, 34, and Truman, 29.)
But as their mom’s condition worsened, that soon changed.
“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,” she wrote. “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.”
Eventually, Dillingham became violent, according to E.A., and the custody agreement was changed.
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“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,” she continued. “My custody arrangement basically switched — now I lived in L.A. and visited Sacramento on the weekends and in the summer.”
“My senior year of high school, she called to say she was dying,” E.A. wrote.
More than 20 years after her mother’s death, E.A. traveled from Los Angeles to Palatka, Florida, along Interstate 10 (hence the book title), hoping to learn more about Dillingham.
“Reckoning with the past, the present, her memories, and herself, Hanks brings us along a beautiful voyage towards understanding how the stories we tell about the places we’re from ultimately become the stories we tell about the people we are,” reads the book’s synopsis.
The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road releases on Tuesday, April 8.
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