lifeofreilley.com

Jeanette Walls

This was a fantastic book. I would recommend it to anyone - male, female, young, or old. When my aunt recommended it to me, I put it off for several months. When I read the description, it didn’t seem to capture my attention. I was completely wrong. I loved this book, from the beginning to the end. For a memoir, it reads incredibly fast. Walls weaves the story of her childhood and early adult life into an inspirational novel of unconditional love, forgiveness, and believing in one’s self. Walls begins her novel in the western United States, where she and her nomadic, whimsical parents move from town to town, failing to hold down jobs, and barely scraping by. When the family moves to West Virginia, Walls faces a perverted grandmother and uncle, and the reality of being so poor that she has to survive for three days on only a stick of margarine. Walls, in the face of extreme poverty, continues to see the good in everything, and somehow finds a way to make it out of the coal mining slums of West Virginia to New York City, where she eventually attends college.