E.A. Hanks, Daughter of Tom Hanks, Writes About Childhood with Troubled Mom After Parents' Divorce in Exclusive Excerpt (2025)

In 2019, E.A. Hanks, the daughter of Tom Hanks and first wife Susan Dillingham, set out on the road to learn more about her mother, a troubled woman who died from lung cancer in 2002 at age 49, leaving behind many unanswered questions.

Her parents met and fell in love when they were both theater students at Sacramento State University back in the mid '70s. Together, they had two children, E.A. (short for Elizabeth Anne) and her older brother Colin, now 47.

After five years of marriage, they divorced in 1985. Susan (who went by the stage name Samantha Lewes early in her career) got primary custody, and the kids had designated weekend and summer visits with Tom. Until one day, Susan moved them, without notice, from Los Angeles to Sacramento.

“My dad came to pick us up from school and we’re not there,” recalls E.A. “And it turns out we haven't been there for two weeks and he has to track us down." (Though her mother was never diagnosed, E.A. believes Susan was bipolar with episodes of extreme paranoia and delusion.)

E.A. Hanks, Tom Hanks' Daughter, Set Out to Learn If Her Maternal Grandfather Was a Murderer (Exclusive)

E.A. Hanks, Daughter of Tom Hanks, Writes About Childhood with Troubled Mom After Parents' Divorce in Exclusive Excerpt (1)

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E.A., now 42, explores the mysteries of her mother’s past In her evocative new book, The 10: A Memoir of Family And The Open Road. It’s a story of her six-month road trip on Interstate 10, from L.A. to Palatka, Florida, where her mom’s family had once lived, to learn more about the complicated woman who loved Shakespeare and poetry – and who had a haunted past.

In the excerpt below, shared exclusively with PEOPLE, she shares a look at her turbulent childhood in Sacramento. The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Roadis out Tuesday, April 8,wherever books are sold.

E.A. Hanks, Daughter of Tom Hanks, Writes About Childhood with Troubled Mom After Parents' Divorce in Exclusive Excerpt (2)

I am a kid from the First (non-famous) Marriage. My only memories of my parents in the same place at the same time are Colin’s high school graduation, then my high school graduation. I have one picture of me standing between my parents. In it, my mother’s best wig is slightly askew.

I was born in Burbank, but after my parents split up, my mother took my older brother and me to live in Sacramento. I have few memories of the early years in Los Angeles. Eventually a divorce agreement was settled, and I would visit my dad and stepmother (and soon enough my younger half brothers) on the weekends and during summers, but from 5 to 14, years filled with confusion, violence, deprivation, and love, I was a Sacramento girl. I lived in a white house with columns, a backyard with a pool, and a bedroom with pictures of horses plastered on every wall.

E.A. Hanks, Daughter of Tom Hanks, Writes About Childhood with Troubled Mom After Parents' Divorce in Exclusive Excerpt (3)

As the years went on, the backyard became so full of dog s--- that you couldn’t walk around it, the house stank of smoke. The fridge was bare or full of expired food more often than not, and my mother spent more and more time in her big four-poster bed, poring over the Bible. One night, her emotional violence became physical violence, and in the aftermath I moved to Los Angeles, right smack in the middle of the seventh grade. My custody arrangement basically switched — now I lived in L.A. and visited Sacramento on the weekends and in the summer. When I was 14, my mother and I drove across America along Interstate 10 to Florida, in a Winnebago that lumbered along the asphalt with a rolling gait that felt nautical.

My senior year of high school, she called to say she was dying.

E.A. Hanks, Daughter of Tom Hanks, Writes About Childhood with Troubled Mom After Parents' Divorce in Exclusive Excerpt (2025)

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