Rex steals their savings, but Lori makes it to New York City. The Walls later buy their own house - a crumbling shack without indoor plumbing.Īs teens, Lori and Jeannette pool their meager earnings to move to New York together. The family stays with his dysfunctional, alcoholic family.

The family moves to a dismal West Virginia mining town where Rex grew up. Rose Mary’s extravagant art supply purchases and Rex’s carousing soon put the family back in dire straits. When Jeannette is eight years old, Rose Mary inherits a nice Arizona home from her mother. They praise their children’s fortitude, maintaining that what doesn’t kill them makes them stronger. The neglected Walls siblings experience sexual abuse at the hands of strangers and relatives, beatings by bullies, severe accident-related injuries and hunger that drives them to go through trash cans. Rex disappears on drinking binges, occasionally returning with food or money he’s won through his gambling. She lets the kids fend for themselves and always frames their poverty and midnight getaways as adventures. Her mother, Rose Mary Walls, an artist and self-proclaimed excitement addict, considers her painting and writing paramount to the responsibilities of motherhood.

The family often does the “skedaddle,” leaving town under the cover of night to escape collectors.

Rex’s alcoholism and debts always catch up with him, no matter where he moves. She and her three siblings - older sister, Lori younger brother, Brian and baby sister, Maureen - live in numerous desert towns where their father, Rex, does odd jobs. Walls’ memoir chronicles her childhood with brilliant and creative, but nomadic and neglectful, parents. Jeannette Walls, an award-winning author and regular MSNBC contributor, recounts her shockingly dysfunctional home life as a youth.

Lori the glass castle