Who Could Ever Love You: A Family Memoir

by Mary L. Trump Narrated by Mary L. Trump

Overview

This program is read by the author.

Who Could Ever Love You is an intimate, heartbreaking memoir of a father, a mother, and a family's exile.

Mary Trump grew up in a family divided by its patriarch's relentless drive for money and power. The daughter of Freddy Trump, the highly accomplished, dashing eldest son of wealthy real estate developer Fred Trump, and Linda Clapp, a flight attendant from a working-class family, Mary lived in the shadow of Freddy's humiliation at the hands of his father.

Fred Trump embodied the ethos of the zero-sum game and among his five children, there could only be one winner. That was supposed to be Freddy, his namesake, but Fred found him wanting-too sensitive, too kind, too interested in pursuits beyond the realm of the real estate empire he was meant to inherit. In Donald, Fred found a kindred spirit, a “killer,” who would stop at nothing to get his own way.

Even after Freddy's short-lived career as a professional pilot for TWA came to an end, he never stopped trying to gain his father's approval. Finally, at the age of forty-two, he succumbed to Fred's lethal contempt and died alone in an emergency room, with no family by his side.

In WHO COULD EVER LOVE YOU, Mary Trump brings us inside the twisted family whose patriarch ignored, froze out, and eventually destroyed his own. Freddy Trump's decline into alcoholism and illness, along with Linda's suffering after their divorce, left Mary dangerously vulnerable as a very young girl.

Inadequately and only conditionally loved, there were no adults in her life except for the father she loved, but lost before she could know him; and a mother abandoned by her ex-husband's rich and powerful family who demanded her loyalty but left her with nothing.

With searching insight, poignant detail, and unsparing prose, Mary Trump reveals the cold, selfish cruelty that has come to define the Trump family thanks in large part to her uncle, whose malignant ambition has riven our nation and threatens the world.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

By turns lyrical and stark, Mary Trump writes with honesty, anguish, and unflinching detail about growing up in a family that made a sport of destroying its own. Who Could Ever Love You lays bare the Trump dynastic traumas and demonstrates how those traumas now hold sway over all of us. Mary Trump has written a brilliant memoir.”

—Molly Jong-Fast

“This memoir is the portrait of a spark— is it love, or God, or decency?— the spark inside the rare person that can grow in the hardest ground, the sandiest soil. I honestly don’t know how someone can withstand such a thoroughly poisonous stew of a family dynamic and come out the other end such an intelligent, caring and perspicacious human being. That Mary Trump exists is nothing short of a miracle.”

—Aimee Mann, Grammy Award-winning musician

"Trump’s clear and concise prose shines...an astute and occasionally explosive plunge into an American dynasty’s heart of darkness." — Publishers Weekly, starred review

"With raw authenticity and bracing detail. . . [Trump] peels back the traumatic layers of her early life. . .[She] doesn’t skimp on the jarring, revelatory details of her toxic family, telling her truths with lucidity. . .[A] scathing expose of the enduring fallout from a poisonous, dysfunctional family dynamic." — Kirkus, starred review

Product Details

BN ID:	2940191596587
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	09/10/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	518,931