From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle
and Hang the Moon, Jeannette Walls's gripping novel "transports us
with her powerful storytelling...contemplates the extraordinary bravery
needed to confront real-life demons in a world where the hardest thing
to do may be to not run away" (O, The Oprah Magazine).
It is 1970 in a small town in California. "Bean" Holladay is twelve and
her sister, Liz, is fifteen when their artistic mother, Charlotte, takes
off to find herself, leaving her girls enough money to last a month or
two. When Bean returns from school one day and sees a police car outside
the house, she and Liz decide to take the bus to Virginia, where their
widowed Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying mansion that's been in
Charlotte's family for generations.
An impetuous optimist, Bean soon discovers who her father was, and hears
stories about why their mother left Virginia in the first place. Money
is tight, and the sisters start babysitting and doing office work for
Jerry Maddox, foreman of the mill in town, who bullies his workers, his
tenants, his children, and his wife. Liz is whip-smart--an inventor of
word games, reader of Edgar Allan Poe, nonconformist. But when school
starts in the fall, it's Bean who easily adjusts, and Liz who becomes
increasingly withdrawn. And then something happens to Liz in the car
with Maddox.
Jeannette Walls has written a deeply moving novel about triumph over
adversity and about people who find a way to love each other and the
world, despite its flaws and injustices.
