J.D. Vance sprang to American celebrity with his 2016 bestseller Hillbilly Elegy, an account of his childhood in a dysfunctional Kentucky family, with an addicted mother, a tough and eccentric grandmother and the alcoholic husband she once dowsed with petrol and set fire to (Mamaw and Papaw), who became his surrogate parents, the one source of love and stability in a chaotic world.

Despite criticism that it endorsed negative stereotypes of Appalachian life, Hillbilly Elegy seemed to both conservative and liberal commentators to provide valuable insight into the defection of poor white American voters from their traditional Democrat allegiance to support for the conservative populism of Donald Trump. Vance, working-class boy made good as a Yale-trained corporate lawyer, found what he calls a “comfortable niche” as the acceptable face of the American Right, highly critical of Trump, while highly sympathetic towards Trump’s supporters.

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