{"id":220755,"date":"2026-08-15T23:55:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T23:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/in-jd-vances-hometown-comment-on-his-new-memoir-is-hard-to-find-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T23:55:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T23:55:13","slug":"in-jd-vances-hometown-comment-on-his-new-memoir-is-hard-to-find-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/in-jd-vances-hometown-comment-on-his-new-memoir-is-hard-to-find-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"In JD Vance\u2019s hometown, comment on his new memoir is hard to find – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US vice-president\u2019s most recent memoir may be widely read in Middletown, Ohio, but no one seems to be talking about it
N<\/span>early two months since JD Vance\u2019s most recent memoir, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, was released, and following sales of 64,000 copies in its first week, Vance\u2019s hometown of Middletown, Ohio, has had time to take it in.
At the town library, administrators say there has been interest in the book among the wider public.
\u201cIt\u2019s been one of our most popular [books]. It\u2019s been No 2 in adult nonfiction since 9 June,\u201d says Cari Hillman of the MidPointe Library System, noting that Mel Robbins\u2019s The Let Them Theory, published in 2024, has kept Vance off the top spot. The local library system, which includes five branches and a bookmobile, has 20 copies of Vance\u2019s book; as of 27 July, 11 were checked out.
Joe Mulligan, a member of the Republican party who serves on Middletown\u2019s city council, said he hadn\u2019t read the book yet but planned to \u201csoon\u201d.
He said that while there were no current city plans to mark the publication of the book, it \u201ccould be an opportunity for the city\u2019s churches and faith communities to discuss the role that faith and communion with our neighbors can help build up each other and to work together\u201d.
As a practicing Catholic, Mulligan said, he admires Vance\u2019s life story.
\u201cWe can be grateful for the important role that Middletown, Ohio<\/a>, played in vice-president Vance\u2019s life,\u201d he says. \u201cThe job opportunities for his grandfather cured poverty for multiple generations of Vances. And the young JD himself was employed as a youth at Dillman Foods, a local grocery store not far from his Mamaw\u2019s house.\u201d
Vance is seen as a frontrunner for the Republican party\u2019s 2028 presidential race and candidates from both parties have a long history of releasing personal memoirs in the lead-up to a presidential campaign bid.
But among Middletown\u2019s general public, the vice-president\u2019s new book hasn\u2019t exactly hit home, and on the city\u2019s streets many residents are uneasy about sharing their opinion on Vance or his writings.
Inside the Middletown library building, there\u2019s no sign of Communion on the wall of nonfiction new releases (the book was released on 16 June). Instead, there\u2019s another religious-themed book \u2013 Rebel: Following Jesus When the World Walks the Other Way by musician Anne Wilson \u2013 among more than a dozen titles taking pride of place.
Inside the Butler county Republican party headquarters several miles east of downtown Middletown, there are signs from the Trump-Vance 2024 campaign and several more in the window depicting Vivek Ramaswamy<\/a>, the Republican candidate in the November election for Ohio governor.
But there are no signs of copies of or promotional material for Vance\u2019s book. The front door was locked on a recent afternoon, and emails sent by the Guardian asking whether the party planned any events to mark the vice-president\u2019s new book were not responded to. The phone number attached to the office window was no longer in service when the Guardian attempted to call.
In the 2024 presidential election, in Butler county \u2013 where Middletown sits \u2013 some 62% of voters picked the Trump-Vance ticket. But that enthusiasm has not universally translated to the book\u2019s popularity, it seems.
\u201cI haven\u2019t read or even seen a copy of Communion \u2026 So far, I haven\u2019t found anyone who has read it,\u201d says a Catholic priest who has served in Middletown for decades but declined to speak on the record.
\u201cSome [residents] have read the reviews. People obviously have their opinions on JD.\u201d
Fr Henry Stephan, the priest who baptized Vance at St Gertrude\u2019s church in Cincinnati in 2019<\/a>, and whose name appears in the book\u2019s acknowledgements, declined an interview. Vance was baptized after moving back to Ohio and starting a venture capitalist effort.
The department chair of theology at Middletown\u2019s Catholic high school, Bishop Fenwick high school, also declined to comment. A person who runs a local book club said they didn\u2019t expect their group to review Communion as its members don\u2019t discuss political publications \u201cas not everyone agrees on political views\u201d. Emails sent to the Middletown city council administration asking whether an event was being planned to mark the release of the town\u2019s most-famous son\u2019s book weren\u2019t responded to.
The town\u2019s only independent bookstore, Crab Apple Books, closed in 2024. Down the street, at a comics bookstore, a manager declined to comment on Vance or his writing efforts, citing the business\u2019s apolitical stance.
Vance\u2019s family migrated from Appalachian Kentucky to industrial south-west Ohio almost a century ago, where the manufacturing industry boomed until the 1990s, in search of jobs. Religion was not a major part of his childhood.
And while his 2016 book Hillbilly Elegy was seen as offering a unique window into the motivations behind rural and working-class America\u2019s turn towards Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election \u2013 selling more than 1.6m copies by July 2024, when Trump chose Vance as his presidential running mate \u2013 his latest publication has received an altogether more muted response<\/a> from reviewers.
One of the more apparent faults observers find is that the church depicted on the cover of Communion is not, in fact, a Catholic church.
Mulligan, however, says that\u2019s not a big deal. \u201cI do not believe that the cover image should distract from the message of the text,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s probably true for any book cover.\u201d
In Communion, Vance mentions Carol\u2019s Speakeasy, a dive bar close to Interstate 75 where, as a college student, the vice-president once went to \u201cplay darts and tell stories\u201d with a lovesick friend.
But a manager who answered the phone recently said they hadn\u2019t read the book, didn\u2019t intend to read it, nor was aware that the bar was mentioned in Communion.
Carol, the bar\u2019s owner, was in Florida, the manager said, and could therefore not be reached to comment on the book.<\/p>\n

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The US vice-president\u2019s most recent memoir may be widely read in Middletown, Ohio, but no one seems to be talking about itNearly two months since JD Vance\u2019s most recent memoir, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, was released, and following sales of 64,000 copies in its first week, Vance\u2019s hometown of Middletown, Ohio, has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":220756,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}