Trailer Park Parable: A Memoir of How Three Brothers Strove to Rise Above Their Broken Past, Find Forgiveness, and Forge a Hopeful Future

#17 on the PW Bestseller Trade Paper Frontlist

Growing up amid addiction and chaos in a Minnesota trailer park, Tyler Zed and his two brothers broke the cycle of abuse and forged a different path.

"Attempted murder victim told the Brainerd Dispatch she believes her sixteen-year-old son saved her."

This is the news article detailing the event that would drastically change Tyler Zed's life and that of his family forever.

Growing up in a small town in Minnesota, Tyler and his two brothers filled their days with chaotic fun, from playing hockey to building forts to making their own home movies. The household was also full of addiction and abuse that ultimately led to their father attempting to murder their mother on Christmas Eve 2007.

Trailer Park Parable follows Tyler and his family before Christmas Eve 2007, the events leading to that night, and the years afterward. It trails the boys as they deal with varying degrees of PTSD and their own battles with addiction, before they eventually turned their creative coping mechanisms, like their YouTube channels, into million-subscriber successes.

From living in a trailer park to running a multi-million-dollar business, Trailer Park Parable highlights a true, American-dream story, countering a popular narrative that tells us you may as well not even try, the system is rigged against you.


About the Author
Tyler Zed (real name Desmond Janousek) was born in Minnesota in 1990. He served in the United States Air Force as a medical technician from 2011 to 2015. After getting out of the military, he attended the University of Minnesota where he began creating YouTube videos as a hobby under the alias "Tyler Zed." Years later, his channel, Zeducation, has garnered over a million subscribers and continues to get millions of views a week.