Trump VP candidate J. D. Vance's 'Hillbilly Elegy' may not have all the facts in place

J. D. Vance has blurred some details, perhaps unintentionally, in a manner that likely comports with most memoirs, especially those that rely heavily on family lore.

Some of what was left out of “ Elegy ” undermines Vance ’s larger political project, in which matrimony and the nuclear family are the foundation of a civil society that stigmatizes divorce.

Bonnie and Jim Vance filed for divorce from Jim on grounds of “extreme cruelty” and “gross neglect of duty” in 1955 .

Bonnie , then twenty-one , asked the court for a restraining order against Jim as well as alimony, child support, and custody of three-year-old Jimmy .

In August, 1957 , the divorce filing was dismissed “without record,” leaving no documented clue as to why.

Divorce rates have not been rising for some time; they peaked in the U.S. at the turn of the eighties , before Vance was born.

A quarter century after Bonnie Vance ’s first divorce petition was dismissed, her marriage appears to have reached another breaking point.

Jim and Bonnie Vance filed for divorce from Bonnie ; Bonnie filed a counterclaim; the couple did not divorce.