"Truth is stranger than fiction" would most aptly describe this memoir. This is one of those books I have read multiple times and each time have found impossible to put down. Jeanette Walls' recounting of her journey from childhood to adulthood amidst the chaos and adventure that characterized her family is amazing, heartbreaking, and ultimately triumphant (did I just sound like your local newspaper book reviewer with that one or what? Cheezy! But true). Jeanette's carefree and nonconformist parents, Rex and Rosemary, bring her and her siblings on a nomadic, passionate, and often harrowing existence throughout the Southwest United States. Though they struggle to eke out an existence that, to most, would be even tolerable, Jeanette's recollections show great passion, adventure, and even brilliance from her parents. Often I found myself fist-pumping and cheering (albeit, mentally rather than actually) over their good turns of fortune and narrow escapes. On the flip side, though, I also found myself aching for Jeanette and her siblings during their resourceful father's bouts of alcoholism and artistic mother's periods of focused self-pursuit. Ultimately the adventure runs out and the family find themselves in an impoverished West Virginia mining town where the fun ends and Jeanette and her brother and sisters are fending for themselves in an impossible situation out of which they do eventually fight their way.
BOTTOM LINE: Did I mention triumphant?
