PDF Summary:The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls

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Jeannette and Rose Mary met for lunch a few days later, and the conversation was as random and ludicrous as ever. Her mother had cleaned up a bit, wearing a sweater with fewer stains and men’s shoes. Rose Mary launched into a discussion about the Picasso retrospective she’d seen. She didn’t think much of Picasso.

Jeannette tried to offer her parents assistance, but Rose Mary pushed the idea away. They didn’t need Jeannette’s money. Rose Mary said if Jeannette wanted to help her, she could buy her an electrolysis treatment because looking good raises your spirits.

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Paradise Lost

Whenever Jeannette’s family came to visit, they were loud and unruly. Her parents would argue, sing, laugh, and make a general ruckus that earned admonishments from the staff.

Rex was always the more gregarious. He threatened to beat up the nurses and doctors if Jeannette wasn’t being treated right. Her mother wasn’t much better. When she found out about the nurse and the chewing gum, she went into a tirade about what a disgusting habit chewing gum was. She was going to give that nurse the what-for.

Rex thought it would have been better if Jeannette had seen the witch doctor they’d taken her older sister to after she was bitten by a scorpion. He said she’d heal faster than being stuck in here with the quacks they called doctors. In fact, Rex started a fight with one of the doctors. He argued that keeping her in bandages didn’t allow the burns to breathe. The doctor countered that the bandages warded off infections. Rex pulled his fist back in anticipation for a punch, but the doctor backed away. A security guard escorted the family out of the hospital.

The next time the family visited Jeannette, Brian’s head was wrapped in a blood-soaked...

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A couple of nights after the flaming cake, Jeannette’s parents came back from the casino in a hurry. They said it was time to skedaddle again. The casino was on to Rex’s system, and they had to put as much distance as they could between them and the mafia hot on his trail. Her mother wanted to live near the ocean, so they headed for California.

San Francisco

Jeannette’s fascination with fire was the catalyst for another Walls family skedaddle shortly after arriving in San Francisco. Rose Mary didn’t want to stay in what she called “tourist traps” near the wharf, so the family found an affordable hotel in the Tenderloin District, where many of the residents were prostitutes.

The children were often left alone in the hotel while their parents went in search of investment capital for the Prospector. Jeannette found a box of wooden matches and took them to the bathroom. She built a mound of toilet paper in the toilet, set it on fire, and flushed only when the flames were lapping high out of the basin.

A few nights later, Jeannette woke up to a fire in their room. The curtains were flaming a few steps from her bed. Her parents weren’t there, and she couldn’t...

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The problem was the Walls’ inability to budget. Their habit of gorging themselves when food was available led to larger bills at the commissary. Rex’s salary would run out before the month was up, and sometimes he owed money.

However, one place money wasn’t going to was the bars. Rex had curbed his drinking, choosing instead to stay home with his family spread around the room reading. A large dictionary was opened in the middle of the room for the kids to look up unfamiliar words. If Jeannette didn’t agree with a definition, she and Rex would write letters to the publishers in protest.

A Normal Childhood

Jeannette and her siblings were enrolled in the elementary school in Battle Mountain. She entered the second grade, and although she was light years ahead of her class in reading and math, she kept quiet. She’d learned what being the class pet could lead to in Blythe.

The other kids were mostly sons and daughters of miners and gamblers, and they also lived in the Tracks. The Walls children finally had other kids to play with. Rex would often play with them, and the neighborhood children sometimes asked for Rex instead of his kids.

**Rose Mary didn’t set limits...

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There was also a termite infestation. Rex discovered the extent of the problem after Lori’s foot pushed through the floorboards one night. But the problem was too large to fix, so they ignored the pests and crashed through multiple points in the floor. Whenever a new hole opened up, Rex would hammer an empty beer can over it as a patch.

An Eye-Opening Discovery

Jeannette, Brian, and Lori enrolled in Emerson Public School, a nice school in a nice neighborhood with lush grass and banana trees. All three children were placed in gifted reading groups upon entry. The school also had a nurse, and the Walls children were given vision and hearing exams for the first time. This was how they found out Lori was nearsighted.

Rose Mary wouldn’t hear of getting glasses for Lori. She thought glasses only made poor eyesight worse and that Lori needed to strengthen her eyes through use. But the school said Lori couldn’t attend without them.

When Lori received her glasses, she looked at the world outside with wonder. She’d never seen leaves on trees, words on billboards, or birds in the distance. She was seeing the world for the first time, and she cried with joy.

**Lori became...

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As they drove through town, Jeannette tried to make friendly gestures to people she saw on the street, but none of them smiled back. Rose Mary seemed giddy. She reckoned there were no other artists in Welch. Her career could really take off there.

The Outsiders

Rose Mary walked Brian and Jeannette to the local elementary school the next morning. She explained to the principal that they’d forgotten their records but assured him they were both bright students. When the principal asked Jeannette what eight times seven was, she couldn’t understand his hillbilly accent. Rose Mary translated, and Jeannette shouted the answer. Similarly, the principal didn’t understand her accent. He said the children seemed slow and had speech problems, so he placed them in classes for kids with learning disabilities.

The school was a far cry from Emerson in Phoenix. There was no playground equipment or free bananas. The winter winds were already whirling through. Rose Mary had purchased used winter coats, but Jeannette’s didn’t have any buttons. As they waited outside for the morning bell, she wrapped her arms around her front to keep the coat closed.

On Jeannette’s first day of fifth...

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Despite her antics, Rose Mary was making money, and her paycheck was a blessing to the household. On payday, they’d cash the check and pay off the monthly bills. Rose Mary put space heaters and a refrigerator on layaway and paid a little each month. They’d stock up on groceries and have enough money left over to survive the rest of the month.

But soon the food was gone, and so was the money. Jeannette could never get a straight answer from Rose Mary about where the money went. She knew Rose Mary had to buy little gifts for herself, things she said made you feel rich, like crystal vases. But even accounting for those splurges, there should have been money left over. Jeannette and Lori came up with a budget and tried to persuade Rose Mary to let them handle the finances, but she refused. By the end of each month, Jeannette was back to digging in garbage cans for lunch.

Personal Improvements

Life changed for Jeannette when she entered Welch High School as a seventh grader. She wanted to belong to a club where people would accept her. She thought about track, but Rose Mary wouldn’t pay for the uniform, so she started working for the school newspaper, The Maroon Wave....

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The night she was finishing the bust, everyone cheered her on. Rex stumbled in later, drunk and surly. He told Lori that Shakespeare was a phony and hadn’t written any of his plays. He took one look at the bust, then used his thumb to wipe off Shakespeare’s lying mouth. He said he would help her write a paper exposing Shakespeare as a fraud that would set the literary world on fire.

Lori was broken. She didn’t have the heart to fix the bust and smashed it into a blob of clay.

The Final Blow

Lori and Jeannette decided Lori would still move, even if she hadn’t found a school to attend. She’d work and figure it out along the way.

As usual, Rex didn’t understand why everyone was so bent out of shape about the bust. He said he wasn’t trying to ruin Lori’s plans for New York, but he added that she was a fool for wanting to go. She’d end up living on the streets, becoming a drug addict, and working as a prostitute. When everyone ignored him, he said he didn’t know why he even bothered to come home.

By the time Lori’s graduation came around, the three kids had saved up nine months of earnings. Jeannette came home to add her recent babysitting pay to Oz and found it...

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One day, someone mentioned something about the Progressive Era during an interview, and Jeannette had to look it up in the encyclopedia when she returned to the office. Mike suggested she might enjoy college so she could learn all the things she didn’t know. He added that a college degree would help her land a better job. He said she was always welcome at The Phoenix if she ever wanted to come back.

Leave No One Behind

Jeannette and Brian had been corresponding through letters since she left. Although life was moving forward for her and Lori, things in Welch were getting increasingly worse.

Rex was always drunk except when he was thrown in jail for a night. Rose Mary was successful at living for herself and was more or less withdrawn from the family. Maureen was practically living at her friends’ homes. And Brian was sleeping underneath an inflatable raft because the roof in their bedroom had collapsed from water damage.

Jeannette and Lori wondered if Brian would like the city. He was comfortable in the outdoors and never seemed to have a problem with Welch. Also, unlike the girls, Brian had friends. But after Jeannette called and told him about the apartment and...

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Jeannette and Eric were married four years after she moved in. Their life together was stable and uneventful, and that was just the right speed for Jeannette.

The Awful Truth

A few months after Jeannette’s wedding, Rose Mary’s brother, Jim, died. Grandma Smith had left the other half of the Texas land to Jim. Rose Mary wanted to make sure the land stayed in the family, so she told Jeannette to ask Eric to help her buy it. Jeannette was happy to help and said she had some money saved up. All she needed was the land value to start the process. Rose Mary was cagey, as she had been their whole lives about the land. But when Jeannette pressed her, she said she needed a million dollars.

Jeannette nearly fell off her seat. She thought about how her uncle’s land was the same size as her mother’s. She asked if Rose Mary’s land was worth the same amount, but Rose Mary said she didn’t know. She’d never had it appraised, but she guessed it was more or less the same.

Jeannette was floored. Her mind raced through all those years without food or heat or water or clothes. She thought about the years her parents had been on the streets and squatting in an abandoned building. **Was it...

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The family reminisced about the craziness of the past and all of Rex’s antics, including those that showcased how much he cared about his kids. John proposed a toast to Rex, and Rose Mary raised her glass. She said, “Life with your father was never boring.” Jeannette could almost hear her father laughing from wherever he was.