I first became aware of J.D. Vance in 2016, soon after his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” came out. I knew the book had been published because I had no fewer than five friends or former colleagues send it to me. All with basically the same message: “This is the rural version of your childhood.”

Back in 2012, Simon & Schuster had published my memoir, “Rolling Pennies in the Dark.” It chronicled a childhood lived in abject poverty and homelessness brought about by severely dysfunctional alcoholic parents.

After the third copy of Vance’s book — soon to be a New York Times bestseller —arrived on my doorstep, I began to read it, and didn’t stop until I was finished. Not only did it move me, but it opened my eyes in so many needed ways.

Vance’s tale of his grandparents moving from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to an Ohio steel town in the hopes of creating a better life for them and their children; the divorce of his parents; his mother’s struggle with addiction; being raised in large part by his maternal grandparents; and his realization that he had to put aside excuses and rely on himself reverberated with me on multiple levels. While we did have shared pain and heartbreak, his rural life of despair was quite alien to me, and I was grateful to be afforded the window into that world he opened.

After reading the book, I began to pay more attention to Vance’s career. Most especially after he decided to run for political........

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