Jeannette Walls

A true-life novel about Lily Casey Smith (the author's grandmother) who at age six helped her father break horses, at age fifteen left home to teach in a frontier town, and later as a wife and mother runs a vast ranch in Arizona where she survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy--but despite a life of hardscrabble drudgery still remains a woman of indomitable spirit.

It is 1970 in a small town in California. "Bean" Holladay is twelve and her sister Liz, is fifteen when their mother, Charlotte, takes off, leaving her girls enough money to last a month or two. One day Bean sees a police car outside the house, and she and Liz decide to take the bus to Virginia, where their Uncle Tinsley lives. Bean soon discovers who her father was, and hears many stories about why their mother left Virginia. Bean adores her whip-smart...

Chronicling the adventures of an eccentric, resilient and tight-knit family. A remarkable story of unconditional love. A young woman who, influenced by the joyfully wild nature of her deeply dysfunctional father, found the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.