Erma kicks the family out of her basement, and the Wallses move into a dilapidated house with no indoor plumbing and holes in the ceiling.Īfter a visit from a social worker, Jeannette all but forces Mom to get a teaching job to ensure that the family stays together. The kids wonder if Dad, too, was molested by Erma. The family stays with Dad’s parents, Erma and Ted, until one day Jeannette catches Erma sexually assaulting Brian. Broke and desperate for a way to manage Dad’s drinking, Mom uproots the family to Welch, West Virginia, a deeply impoverished coal mining community and Dad’s hometown.

At Jeannette’s insistence, Dad quits drinking for a few months but soon spirals back into alcoholism. His drinking worsens, culminating in a disastrous Christmas Eve bender during which he lights the Christmas tree on fire. Due to Dad’s distrust of authority, he uproots the family once again, this time to a large house in Phoenix that Mom recently inherited after the death of her wealthy mother.ĭad joins an electrician’s union and gains employment easily, but he loses a series of jobs until he is finally ejected from the union. Later that night, the police arrive and demand that the family speak to the magistrate in the morning. The following day, Billy attacks the children with a BB gun, and Jeannette shoots at Billy’s feet, driving him away. Mom reluctantly gets a job as a teacher, and relative stability returns to the Walls household until a delinquent adolescent named Billy Deel attempts to rape eight-year-old Jeannette. Most days, the refrigerator and pantry are barren, forcing the kids to steal food from classmates and neighbors.

Life is comparatively stable for about six months until Dad loses his job and starts spending his days and nights drinking. Jeannette now has a baby sister, Maureen. Mom has a teaching degree and comes from a wealthy family, yet she prefers to paint and write all day, even if it means living in squalor.Īfter roughly two years of living a nomadic lifestyle across the American Southwest, the family settles in a small rented house in Battle Mountain, Nevada. He often makes grand plans that never come to fruition, like the construction of a massive solar-powered home he calls the Glass Castle. Dad is a talented and intelligent electrician who struggles to maintain a job due to his alcoholism, intransigence, and paranoia. Three-year-old Jeannette Walls lives in an Arizona trailer park with her older sister Lori, her younger brother Brian, and her parents Rex and Rose Mary-referred to henceforth as Mom and Dad. At the start of the narrative, the year is 1963.

The glass castle brian