This April, Hunter Biden will publish a memoir detailing his struggle with substance abuse. The book, called Beautiful Things, will be published by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster.
Hunter, the son of President Joe Biden, has publicly dealt with addiction for years, and his use of illegal substances became a Republican talking point during his father’s campaign. When Donald Trump brought the subject up in one of the presidential debates, Joe retorted, ““My son, like a lot of people, like a lot of people you know at home, had a drug problem. He’s overtaken it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it, and I’m proud of him. I’m proud of my son.”
In the book, Hunter writes: “I come from a family forged by tragedies and bound by a remarkable, unbreakable love.” Hunter lost his mother and sister in a car crash shortly after Joe was first elected to the Senate. In 2015, he lost his brother, Beau, to brain cancer. The title of the book refers to a way the brothers coped with Beau’s diagnosis by emphasizing the important things in life.
Beautiful Things has already received praise from numerous authors, including Stephen King. In a blurb released by Gallery Books, King writes, “In his harrowing and compulsively readable memoir, Hunter Biden proves again that anybody—even
the son of a United States President—can take a ride on the pink horse down nightmare alley….He starts with a question:
Where’s Hunter? The answer is he’s in this book, the good, the bad, and the beautiful.”
The memoir isn’t Hunter’s only current creative venture — he’s reportedly working on a solo show of his artwork at New York’s Georges Bergès Gallery. Hunter’s paintings typically involve him blowing alcohol ink with a straw onto Japanese Yupo paper to make abstract, nature-inspired creations.
Jane is a Chicago transplant who now calls Cleveland Park her home. Before joining Washingtonian, she wrote for Smithsonian Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she studied journalism and opera.
