“Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” by J.D. Vance

c.2016, Harper  $27.99 / $34.99 Canada      264 pages Home is where the heart is. It’s where folks take you in because they love you, and put up with your nonsense for the same reason. It’s where you go when there’s nowhere else, a haven both for body and soul. Home is where the heart is — and, as in the new memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” by J.D. Vance, it’s also where troubles begin. At first glance, most people would say J.D. Vance had a pretty good bringing-up. Vance was born in Middletown, Ohio, sometimes referred to as “Middletucky” because, like him, many residents’ roots lay in the Bluegrass State. Kentucky’s Appalachian hills, in fact, were where Vance remembers spending the best of his childhood, running wild with cousins while his Mamaw, visited kin. Her brothers — Vance’s beloved uncles — taught Vance how to be a man. Such information didn’t come from the men his mother brought around. There was a succession of them: five husbands, various boyfriends, in a roulette-wheel of homes. Vance mistrusted his mother, barely knew his father, and was raised to believe that the man didn’t want him; he grew to rely instead on his sister and...