Tom Hanks‘ daughter, E.A. Hanks (short for Elizabeth Anne), is releasing her new book, The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road, which details her mother’s abuse. The memoir offers rare insights into the life of Tom Hanks’ first wife, Susan Dillingham, who died in 2002. It details how Dillingham’s mental health challenges affected their children, particularly the author herself.
E.A. Hanks talks about her mother’s abuse in her new book
E.A. Hanks is painfully honest in her new memoir. The book reveals all about her mother’s abuse, Dillingham’s deteriorating mental health, and her early memories of “family” life as she saw it. Tom Hanks’ daughter shared that her only memories of her parents being “in the same place at the same time” were on just two occasions: her brother Colin’s high school graduation and her own high school graduation. (via People)
Tom Hanks and his first wife, Susan Dillingham, divorced in 1987 after nine years of marriage. The couple shared two children, Colin and E.A. Hanks. Initially, after the divorce, Dillingham had primary custody of the children, while Tom Hanks had visitation rights.
But as Dillingham’s situation changed, her children suffered as well. E.A. Hanks wrote about her mother’s abuse in the book, detailing how the emotional abuse became “physical” on one occasion. After that, custody arrangements changed, and E.A. Hanks began visiting her mother while living with Tom in Los Angeles.
E.A. Hanks says she was a “Sacramento girl” from the age of 5 to 14 when she lived with her mother. She describes those years as being full of “confusion, violence, deprivation, and love.” When she was in high school, E.A. Hanks detailed how the emotional abuse became physical while living in a house that was often unclean.
The 42-year-old author revealed, “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. My custody arrangement basically switched — now I lived in L.A. and visited Sacramento on the weekends and in the summer.”
E.A. Hanks further talked about the state of the house where she was living with Dillingham when she turned 10 or 11. The author told People, “The screaming was scarier. The food was more inconsistent. She used to be able to keep it together in public. That went very quickly.”
While the abuse left a deep impact, E.A. Hanks also talks about her father, Tom Hanks, whose influence played a significant role in her life. She said, “I’m equally my father’s daughter because he taught me to tell the truth and move forward.
