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In each case, it suggested the areas would be home to different groups and factions, from "hillbilly mystics" to biker gangs.

The book may never wind up on a bestseller list or see the big screen, but Terra Vance said its lessons on empathy and perseverance are “the real hillbilly elegy.”

His rhetoric shifted, and he spent less time talking about the failures of hillbillies and more about elites and Democrats.

Others accepted Vance but don’t like him, mainly because his book criticizes hillbillies for their “bad choices” and flawed culture and celebrates his own desperate escape out of it.

In the book, Vance searches for an explanation for his traumatic relationship with his mother, before hitting on the perfect explanation: His mother’s addiction was a consequence of the fact that her parents were “hillbillies.”