A child on thin ice: EA Hanks on life with her abusive mother – and world-famous father

One half of the author’s early life was spent with a mother who struggled with addiction, her mental health and caring responsibilities. The other was with her father Tom on film sets and in a house full of love and structure. She discusses her road trip back into her complicated past

When EA Hanks was 14, her mother announced she had bought a Winnebago and they were going to drive across the US in it. It was 1996, and Hanks (her initials stand for Elizabeth Ann), had recently left her mother, Susan, to go to live with her father, the actor Tom Hanks, in Los Angeles. “Things between my mother and I were at an absolute low point,” she says. The drive, she remembers, from California – long hours on the road, her mother chain-smoking and listening to Christian rock music, stopping only to eat and sleep – was “three awkward, silent, painful months that would end up with us in Florida”. It is not clear what the point of the road trip was – though Hanks met members of her mother’s family for the first time in Florida – but then not many things were clear with Susan.

In 2019, nearly 20 years after Susan died, Hanks took to the same road, Interstate 10, in an attempt to make sense of her mother’s life. This forms the basis of her memoir, The 10. “I had no idea where my mom grew up, or how she grew up, or who was around. All I knew is that she never spoke of it,” says Hanks. “It always had this tinge of southern gothic drama and violence.”