The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road

Former Vanity Fair writer Hanks—the daughter of Tom Hanks and his late first wife, Susan Dillingham—shines in this affecting debut chronicle of her turbulent relationship with her mother. Dillingham died from bone cancer in 2001, leaving behind a journal containing a cryptic reference to her father’s rape and murder of a young girl. Hanks knew that her “mentally ill” mother’s “relationship with reality was fluid,” but in 2021 she decided to retrace a route along Interstate 10 that she and Dillingham had previously traveled, in hopes that returning to the places they’d visited, and the early sites of her mother’s life, might enable her to understand the journal passage—and, by extension, her mother. Hanks provides evocative descriptions of Phoenix and Tucson, as well as wilder spaces like the White Sands National Monument, along the way. Throughout, she holds little back about the scars Susan left on her (“Like many people who grew up afraid of someone’s anger, I am always ready with a joke to lighten the mood”), while carving out equal space for tenderness and admiration for her mother’s sobriety and role in helping others get sober. While Hanks’s quest yields few concrete answers, her journey will resonate with anyone entangled in a messy parent-child bond. It’s a forthright and moving account. Agent: Isabel Atherton, Creative Authors. (Apr.)