Tom Hanks' Daughter Set Out to Learn If Her Maternal Grandfather Was a Murderer: Her Surprising Journey (Exclusive)
E.A. Hanks, the daughter of Tom Hanks and his first spouse, Susan Dillingham, has authored a new memoir titled The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road.
In her memoir, she discloses that her mother had documented in a journal an incident in which her grandfather had raped and murdered a young girl.
E.A. discusses her mother's struggles with mental health issues and addiction, as well as her experiences living with her mother and brother Colin prior to Tom gaining primary custody.
A decade following the passing of her mother, Susan Dillingham, E.A. Hanks began to sift through items that had been stored away. Among the possessions she chose to keep were a worn quilt from her childhood, a potato masher, a collection of poetry, and a variety of "miscellaneous papers."
Within those papers, E.A. (short for Elizabeth Anne) eventually discovered a red journal that belonged to her mother, who was the first wife of Tom Hanks.
“It wasn’t a journal with dates,” the 42-year-old author explains, “but rather a stream of consciousness, capturing her spontaneous thoughts. Then I came across her account of her father committing this dreadful act.”