'Hillbilly Elegy' gives insight into the mystery du jour — how did Trump happen?

JD Vance's memoir is being lauded as the key to understanding America's white working-class. He tells us why the folks he grew up with voted for Trump

The world is reeling, nothing makes sense anymore. Everybody has it in for those who voted for Donald Trump. Why did it happen, and who are the people who thought Trump would be the answer to their problems?

JD Vance's memoir has been the go-to book for those trying to understand the white working-class in the US and why they voted Trump. The Economist blurbs: "You will not read a more important book about America."

Vance writes truthfully, without pulling punches, about how difficult it was to grow up as a hillbilly - a term he embraces unashamedly. "I am a hill person," he writes. "So is much of America's white working-class. And we hill people aren't doing very well."

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But Trump hadn't happened yet when Vance was writing his book. Brexit was also still in the future. In an interview conducted by email, Vance said that at the time he wasn't uneasy about political developments.

"I was more concerned with the lack of upward mobility in the US. Despite our country's self-image, many poor children in the US fail to achieve any measure of material prosperity in their own lives. This is especially true in the southeastern US, and it breeds a sense of alienation that can sometimes infect our politics."

His memoir is being lauded by many as key to understanding the Americans of the Rust Belt, the once booming steel-making region centred on Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, whose decline Bruce Springsteen and others have immortalised.

The Rust Belt partly overlaps the Appalachian region, which stretches from southern New York state to Mississippi and Alabama. "Many of the parts of the country that flipped from Democratic in 2008 to Republican in 2016 have some ties to Appalachia," Vance says.

"Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania - arguably the three most important states in the 2016 election - are either connected to Appalachia or have large populations of migrants from that area. Many of the voters who made Trump president were hillbillies."

The term jars - think Deliverance and trailer-trash stereotypes. But Vance says: "To me, a hillbilly is a person with some connection to the Appalachian region of the United States - whether they live there or have some family history there. In popular culture, hillbillies are often stereotyped as poor and stupid, but the culture of the region is rich and the people who live there - despite their faults - have a lot to recommend them."

Vance writes lovingly about these flawed characters with a sense of loyalty and an honesty that one cannot fault. He writes about his love for his grandparents - whom he endearingly calls Mamaw and Papaw. In one passage he describes how his grandmother came close to shooting dead a thief.

"According to family lore, Mamaw had nearly killed a man. When she was around 12, Mamaw walked outside to see two men loading the family's cow - a prized possession in a world without running water - into the back of a truck. She ran inside, grabbed a rifle, and fired a few rounds.

"One of the men collapsed - the result of a shot to the leg - and the other jumped into the truck and squealed away. The would-be thief could barely crawl, so Mamaw approached him, raised the business end of her rifle to the man's head, and prepared to finish the job.

"Luckily for him, Uncle Pet intervened. Mamaw's first confirmed kill would have to wait for another day."

block_quotes_start This book is about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it block_quotes_end

But Vance does not only want his memoir to be a tender tribute to the people in and around the Rust Belt town in Ohio where he grew up.

He writes: "This book is about something else: what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It's about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It's about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it."

But who is to blame for the plight of the hillbilly? Vance says: "Undoubtedly some of the blame lies with the decline of American manufacturing. Some of the blame lies with the disintegration of local community institutions, like families and churches. And some of the blame lies with individuals who have reacted to their circumstances by giving up hope.

"You can't understand the plight of this region of the country without appreciating all of these factors."

As for the fact that many people in these areas are looking at the Trump administration to change their lives for the better, Vance says: "People expected Trump to bring back jobs and to reverse the decline that many saw in their communities. It remains an open question whether he'll be successful."

JD Vance's 'Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis' is published by William Collins,R290. Our reviewer gave it 4/5 stars.

• Follow the author of this article, Jennifer Platt, on Twitter: @Jenniferdplatt