Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture

Hotels function as a sanctuary of last resort throughout the memoir, especially for Vance’s female family members, when they seek exit from an abusive relationship. Toward the end of the book, Vance pays for a week’s worth of nights at a Middletown hotel, so that his mother, now an unemployed heroin addict, will not go homeless. More implicitly, hotels reinforce the transitory nature of Vance’s youth, as he moves from home to home in Ohio and Kentucky. 

 If one of the book’s central themes is migration, and especially “out-migration” by Kentucky Appalachians to parts of the Midwest and beyond; U.S. Route 23 is that out-migration’s prime motif. While its chief, explicit reference occurs at the end of chapter 2, its presence is felt throughout the memoir, as family members travel back forth between Ohio and Kentucky. Prior to Lyndon Johnson expanding America’s highway and freeway infrastructure, U.S. Route 23 was the primary route between Jackson, Kentucky and Ohio, and a road well-worn by waves of Kentucky emigrants seeking a better life outside the “holler.”