Character Analysis
We only meet Reese's mom once, briefly, when she visits Reese in jail. That visit is strictly business: She's trying to enlist Reese in her latest schemes to get cash.
She's a manipulator and a drug addict, and her singular focus on drugs has prevented her from making a sufficient (much less happy) home for Reese and his siblings. "As much as I loved Mom when she was straight, that's how much I hated her when she was high" (6.8), Reese tells us. In the epilogue, a year later, we know she hasn't changed much. "Mom is still Mom," Reese says. "She stumbles through her days, and it's almost like Icy is the woman of the house" (35.5). Icy, of course, is only around ten years old. Ugh.
We don't meet Reese's father, Luther Anderson, at all, which is just as well since he sounds like the worst—"the kind of dude who gets to drinking and telling himself he's doing you a favor by beating you up" (2.26). He's emotionally and physically abusive, but Reese, who is insightful, knows that doesn't mean his father is tough. "He wasn't tough. Not inside. Outside he could beat me when I was little, or Willis before he got good with his hands, but he wasn't tough" (21.10). At one point, "he told me he didn't think I was his real son" (4.59), Reese tells us—"That was supposed to make me feel bad and it did" (4.60). So yeah, not exactly father of the year.