The Glass Castle is a memoir of the life of author Jeannette Walls that travels through the hardships and turmoil of her childhood. Throughout the novel, Walls overcomes some of the most unimaginable situations and proves that no matter what life throws at you, there is always a way to find your strength and get back up again.

The novel begins with Walls sitting in a taxi. As she looks out of the window she sees her homeless mother digging through a dumpster. Even the first lines of her memoir give a striking view of the way her family lived their life.

A large  majority of the rest of the novel is a flashback of Walls’ childhood. It begins with her first memory as a child – being on fire. This was just one of the many traumatic events of her life to come, and would most certainly not be the worst.

From this point on, the family is always on the “skedaddle,” constantly looking for a place to start their lives over again because Walls’ father can never seem to keep a job for very long.

The title of Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, also serves as a theme to the novel. Walls’ father always had a dream of building a glass castle, a place where the family would live happily ever after. However, this dream became harder and harder to accomplish as the family continued to struggle and fall deeper into poverty. The glass castle actually represented the complete opposite of the way the Walls’ were living their lives. The glass castle was impossible to build because of the constant turmoil in their family.

The Glass Castle is one of the most heartbreaking and unfortunately true stories that one could imagine. It takes the reader through events that they could never believe possible and sends the reader on a captivating story of the true meaning of family, something that Walls never had as a child. This novel is difficult to put down, and it will leave a lasting impression on the reader. It instills a deeper appreciation of one’s blessings, along with a knowledge of how devastatingly hard others’ lives  may be.