The young JD Vance was used to the melodramas surrounding his mother, Beverly Vance, with her addictions to painkillers, heroin and alcohol, as well as the chaos caused by her five marriages and countless live-in boyfriends.
But his mother was trying to steer a car during one pivotal clash with Bonnie Blanton Vance, the matriarch known to all as "Mamaw."
"There was a lot of screaming, some punching and driving, and then a stopped car on the side of the road," wrote Vance in his bestseller "Hillbilly Elegy," from 2016. "It's a miracle we didn't crash and die: Mom driving and slapping the kids in the backseat; Mamaw on the passenger side, slapping and screaming at Mom. ... We drove home in silence after Mamaw explained that if Mom lost her temper again, Mamaw would shoot her in the face."
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