The Glass Castle: A Memoir

The glass castle : a memoir / Jeannette Walls. -- New York : Scribner, 2006.
288 p. ; 21 cm.
ISBN: 9780743247542 (pbk.)

1. Children of alcoholics -- United States -- Biography. 2. Homeless persons -- Family relationships -- New York (State) -- New York. 3. Poor -- West Virginia -- Welch -- Biography. 4. Problem families -- United States -- Case studies. 5. Problem families -- West Virginia -- Welch -- Case studies. 6. Walls, Jeannette.

362.82092

The first thing Jeannette Walls remembers from her childhood was being on fire. The three-year old was standing on a chair boiling hot dogs when her dress caught on fire At the hospital the nurses wanted to know what a three-year-old was doing cooking hot dogs. “’Mom says I’m mature for my age,’ I told them, ‘and she lets me cook for myself a lot.’ Two nurses looked at each other, and one of them wrote something down on a clipboard. I asked what was wrong. Nothing, they said, nothing.”

Pulling up stakes and doing the skedaddle in the early hours of the morning was a regular part of her family’s nomadic existence going from small desert town in Arizona, Nevada and California, until her father’s inability and her mother’s unwillingness to keep a job landed them in Phoenix living off the inheritance of Jeannette’s maternal grandmother, and when that ran out to the home of her paternal grandmother in Welch, West Virginia. From there one by one, her older sister, Jeannette, her younger brother, and youngest sister set out for New York to find work, education and their own lives.

Half Broke Horses

Half broke horses : a true-life novel / Jeannette Walls.-- New York: Simon & Schuster Audioworks, 2009.
8 sound discs (ca. 9 hr.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.
Unabridged
Read by the author
Compact discs
ISBN: 9780743597227

1. Arizona -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction. 2. Ranch life--Arizona--Fiction. 3. Ranch life--Texas--Fiction. 4. Smith, Lily Casey, 1901-1968 – Fiction. 5. Texas -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction.

813.6

Jeannette Walls takes on the voice of her maternal grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, and tells the story of her life from Lily’s point of view. Lily died when Jeannette was eight. In reconstructing her grandmother’s biography used her mother’s reminisces and local histories, which presented her with several versions of events, so she made some artistic choices and presents Lily’s story as a first person “true-life novel.”

Born on a horse-breeding ranch in West Texas and raising her own children on a large cattle ranch in Arizona, Lily was very familiar with riding and training horses. She was also became a fearless horse racer, air pilot, taxi driver and teacher. Refusing the traditional role of ranch life she begs for a formal education and gets a partial one at the Sisters of Loretto Academy in Santa Fe, until half way through her first year when her father wrote the Mother Superior that he didn’t have the money to continue her education. When she arrives back at the ranch she discovers he’s spent it on some pure-bred dogs, dogs, which are ironically shot by a neighbor for bothering his cattle. This reinforces her already strong tendency of determined and persevering self-reliance.