Sometimes you read a book and it just sticks in your gut like a heavy meal. You can’t shake it. For millions of us, that book was The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. It’s been roughly two decades since it first landed on shelves, and honestly, the story of the Walls family hasn't lost a bit of its jagged, uncomfortable edge.
I remember the first time I picked it up. I expected a standard misery memoir. You know the type—dark childhood, triumphant ending, maybe a few lessons on resilience. But Jeannette didn't do that. She gave us something way more complicated. She wrote about a father who was a genius and a drunk, a mother who was an artist but couldn't be bothered to feed her kids, and a childhood spent "skedaddling" from one dusty desert town to the next.
It’s a weird mix. One minute you’re charmed by Rex Walls’s dream of building a literal glass castle in the desert—a solar-powered masterpiece—and the next, you’re watching him steal the kids’ grocery money to go on a three-day bender. It’s infuriating. It’s heartbreaking. And somehow, it's also beautiful.
The Reality of the Skedaddle
The memoir kicks off with a scene that most people never forget. Jeannette is three years old. She’s standing on a chair, cooking hot dogs on a gas stove because her mom is busy painting in the other room. Her dress catches fire. She ends up in the hospital with horrific burns.
Most parents would be traumatized. Rex and Rose Mary Walls? They "rescue" her from the hospital because they don't like the bill or the questions the doctors are asking. They just run.
This was the "skedaddle."
The family lived in a state of constant motion. They hopped between mining towns in Nevada, Arizona, and California. They slept in the back of a beat-up car or in houses with no indoor plumbing and holes in the roof. To Rex, this wasn't poverty. It was an adventure. He told his four children—Lori, Jeannette, Brian, and Maureen—that they were special. That they were living a life of freedom that "civilized" people were too scared to pursue.
He was a master of the "us against the world" narrative.
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Rex Walls: Hero or Villain?
This is where the book gets really divisive. If you talk to ten people who’ve read The Glass Castle, half will tell you Rex was a monster who should’ve been in jail. The other half will see the tragic figure of a brilliant man destroyed by his own demons and a likely undiagnosed bipolar disorder or severe PTSD from his own dark childhood in Welch, West Virginia.
Rex taught his kids how to shoot pistols. He taught them binary code. He took them to the zoo and broke into the cheetah enclosure because he wanted them to "touch the wild."
But he also let them go hungry for days.
There’s a specific moment in the book where Jeannette, as a young girl, asks her father to stop drinking for her birthday. It’s the only gift she wants. He actually tries. He stays sober for months. But the pull of the bottle—and the shame of his inability to provide—eventually wins. Seeing that cycle of hope and disappointment is almost harder to read than the physical neglect.
Rose Mary Walls and the Choice of Neglect
While Rex struggled with addiction, Rose Mary Walls struggled with... well, herself. She’s one of the most polarizing figures in modern literature. She had a teaching degree. She had land worth millions of dollars back in Texas that she refused to sell because it was "sentimental."
She chose to live in squalor.
She often told her kids that "suffering is good for the soul." It’s an easy thing to say when you’re the one making your children suffer. She’d hide under the covers and cry because she didn't want to go to work, leaving the kids to forage through trash cans at school just to find a half-eaten sandwich.
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The complexity here is that Rose Mary wasn't "evil" in the traditional sense. She was just profoundly selfish. She prioritized her art and her "freedom" over the basic survival of her offspring. It forces the reader to ask: is neglect fueled by apathy worse than abuse fueled by rage?
The Move to Welch and the Turning Point
When the family finally ran out of options out West, they moved to Welch, West Virginia. This is where the story shifts from a dusty, sun-drenched adventure to a cold, grey struggle for survival.
They lived in a house on 93 Little Hobart Street. It had no heat, no running water, and a literal pit of rotting trash in the backyard. The local kids bullied them. The relatives were, in many cases, even more predatory than the parents.
It was in Welch that Jeannette and her older sister Lori realized they had to get out. They weren't waiting for the Glass Castle anymore. They knew it was never going to be built.
They started a "New York Fund." They worked every odd job imaginable—babysitting, tutoring, jewelry making. They saved every penny in a plastic piggy bank they named Oz.
When Rex found the bank and broke it open to buy booze? That was the final straw.
Success Against the Odds
One by one, the Walls children escaped to New York City. They found jobs. They went to college. They built lives that looked nothing like the chaos of their upbringing.
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Jeannette became a high-society gossip columnist. Imagine the irony. She was attending black-tie galas and drinking champagne with the elite, all while her parents moved to the city to be "homeless by choice." She would see her mother rooting through a dumpster on the way to a party.
For years, Jeannette kept her past a secret. She was terrified that if people knew where she came from, her career would be over. She thought she’d be judged.
When she finally wrote The Glass Castle, she didn't do it to settle scores. She did it to stop hiding.
The book's massive success—spending over 400 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list—proved that her story wasn't just hers. It resonated with anyone who has ever felt a mix of love and shame for their family. It touched people who grew up with "functioning" alcoholic parents, or those who felt they had to raise themselves.
Why It Still Matters Today
In 2026, we talk a lot about "generational trauma" and "resilience." These are buzzwords now. But Jeannette Walls lived them before they were trendy.
The book challenges the idea that you have to hate your parents to move past them. Jeannette loves her father. Even at his worst, she sees the man who taught her to look at the stars and dream. That nuance is what makes the book a masterpiece. It refuses to give us easy answers.
Actionable Insights for Readers
If you're picking up the book for the first time, or if you're revisiting it after the 2017 film adaptation (starring Brie Larson and Woody Harrelson), here is how to truly digest the weight of this story:
- Look for the "Coping Mechanisms": Notice how each sibling handles the trauma differently. Lori uses art. Brian uses physical protection and later, law enforcement. Jeannette uses ambition. Maureen... well, Maureen’s path is the most tragic, showing that not everyone "makes it" out unscathed.
- Analyze the Power Dynamics: Pay attention to how Rex uses his intelligence to manipulate his children's perception of reality. It’s a masterclass in gaslighting, even if he believed his own lies.
- Reflect on Personal Resilience: Walls doesn't write for pity. She writes with a detached, journalistic style. Ask yourself how much of your own "success" is fueled by things you’re trying to run away from.
- Research the Welch Context: To understand the bleakness of the second half of the book, look up the history of Welch, West Virginia. Understanding the collapse of the coal mining industry gives a lot of weight to the poverty the family faced.
- Read the Follow-up: If you want to understand where Rose Mary’s "wildness" came from, read Jeannette’s other book, Half Broke Horses. It’s a "true-life novel" about her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith. It explains a lot about the survivalist streak that ran through the family.
The Glass Castle isn't just a book about being poor. It’s a book about the stories we tell ourselves to survive until we’re strong enough to tell the truth. It reminds us that our past is a part of us, but it doesn't have to be the floorplan for our future.
Whether you're a student studying it for a class or just someone looking for a story that feels real, Walls's memoir remains the gold standard for honest storytelling. It’s messy. It’s loud. It’s heartbreaking. It’s exactly like life.