Review: "Between Two Trailers" by J. Dana Trent

Between Two Trailers by J. Dana Trent
Published April 2024 via Convergent Books
★★★★

A preschooler's hands are the perfect size for razor blades, begins Trent. I know because I helped my schizophrenic drug-lord father chop, drop, and traffic kilos in kiddie-ride carcasses across flyover country. (loc. 88*)

There's an opening to capture the attention if ever there was one. Growing up in Indiana, Trent was schooled from a young age in life lessons: if you kill somebody, do it in Vermillion County; there's only so much sugar in the sack; natural elements are the best weapons; never trust a liar. Her father was convinced that these lessons would not just keep her safe but make her strong, and her mother's focus was primarily on ruling the trailer from the nest of sheets and blankets she built up in bed. They loved her—but theirs was not a conventional love.

Dad, too busy to bother with me before I could walk, used duct tape to fasten my hands to my baby bottle filled with chocolate milk. I sat on the kitchen counter by him all day, lifting that duct-taped bottle to my mouth and catching his marijuana exhales as weed ash fell onto his open King James Bible. (loc. 113)

Between Two Trailers sees Trent through those young years of drug-running in Indiana (the right age for those kiddie rides: "That ain't no toy!" her father yelled (loc. 1033)) and off to North Carolina, where her mother relocated the two of them on a whim. A trailer her mother called a shotgun house because if our enemies sent twelve-gauge buckshot through the kitchen window, we'd drop like dominoes (loc. 103); ceiling tiles razored to pieces as her father searched for government bugs; apartments in North Carolina subsidized by the extended family as her mother's fortunes—and get-up-and-go—fluctuated.

It is King and the Lady, as Trent refers to her parents throughout the book, who set the scene and rule the roost throughout the book. King and the Lady who define what normal is throughout Trent's childhood and King and the Lady who compete for Trent's affections and future. The book slows down a bit as Trent gets older and dives headfirst into as ordinary a life as she can create for herself and as she moves away from the lessons of her childhood. It's clear, though, that however complicated a childhood it was (and oh man—it was complicated), Trent has come to make peace with that childhood and to embrace her parents for who they were.

Thanks to the author and publisher for inviting me to review this title through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and pay not be final.