In this heartbreaking and redemptive novel from the author of The Glass Castle and Half Broke Horses, set in 1970 California, 12-year-old Jean "Bean" Holladay tells how her spirited and artistic mother Charlotte has taken off again, leaving Bean and her older sister Liz enough money to last a month or two. When the police investigate Charlotte's absence, Bean and Liz take a bus to Virginia, where their Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying mansion that has been in Charlotte's family for generations. Reading the unabridged text of her novel, Jeannette Walls gives us an unforgettable narrator in clear-eyed Bean, and a richly peopled small town holding out against an encroaching world.

"As the trio learns to coexist, Liz and Bean try to fit into the small southern town. With money tight, they land jobs with mill foreman Jerry Maddox, an overbearing brute who runs roughshod over the town's residents and takes advantage of Liz's trusting nature, with devastating results. Readers familiar with Walls' backstory from her luminous memoir, The Glass Castle, will recognize elements of her personal history in this captivating, read-in-one-sitting, coming-of-age adventure."—Booklist