Who Could Ever Love You

A Family Memoir

De: Mary L. Trump PhD

Narrado por: Mary L. Trump PhD

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 L. 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 L. 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 L. 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.

Reseñas de la Crítica

“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

Heartbreakingly Beautiful and Relatable

Being the same age as Mary, I delighted in the many pop culture references of the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, etc. and I’m so glad she included them otherwise, I’m sure I would I have cried the entire time. As with Mary’s other two books, this book is also beautifully written. Unlike the other two, this one is deeply personal, I related so much with the trauma she endured. The circumstances were different from mine however; the hurt, the self loathing, the denial and the many years of not getting to the route of all of it were exactly the same. From the moment I saw and heard Mary on MSNBC, I was so grateful to her, that she had the courage to speak publicly and answered many of the questions I had about her uncle, the main question in the early days of his presidency being, “why is he the way he is?”

Si Se Puede!

How different we all could be if we had the love when growing up and the support and encouragement from those around us.

Please only let in the goodness of the world around you and may your future be forever bright. Mary. You can persevere.

Honest

Mary's account of her childhood was sad. It totally explains how screwed up the Trump family was, and still is.

Compelling story!

Her narration is good as well. It was interesting to hear in-depth descriptions of things that were in public awareness at various times. She is very intelligent, reflective and honest.

A personal journey

I had no idea the trauma that had so much affected Mary Trump‘s life. I knew about some of the issues that family had in the contempt that Fred Trump had for his oldest son. She spares nothing in describing her life and her relationship with her aunt Marianne and Uncle Donald. This is a pathologically sick family from its early origins with her grandfather Fred Trump. You can see his pathology is it runs through the entire family, including Donald J Trump.