Trailer Trashed: My Dubious Efforts Toward Upward Mobility Book

Hollis Gillespie used to be embarrassed about her hard-drinking, trailer-salesman dad and her missile-making mom with broken dreams of becoming a beautician. But that was then. This is now.

Trailer Trashed is a hilarious and blisteringly honest collection of essays that follows an offbeat single mom through the journey of her life—from finding solace wherever trailer hookups were found, to kidnapping a meth-addicted friend in need of rehab, to pondering over whether to use her bartender's young sperm from his old self or old sperm from his young self. In short, Hollis's prospects of climbing her way out of the riotous lunacy from whence she came sometimes do seem dubious indeed.

Brimming with irreverent, side-splitting observations on life that will wow fans of Augusten Burroughs and Sarah Vowell, this is an irresistible, roller coaster ride of a book.

"Ride with me," Hollis's father used to say, and she'd hop into his Chevrolet Corvair. And off they'd go again to no place in particular, happily so. Trailer Trashed is like these rides—in the end it's not where you go, but the ride to get you there that matters.