Life in ‘Glass Castle’ only made Walls stronger

Jeannette Walls spends most of her time digging up dirt on other people's lives. As the gossip columnist for MSNBC.com, Walls tracks down the latest rumors about Britney Spears' marriage, Michael Jackson's peccadilloes and the latest target on the PETA hit list.

But her road to celebrity gossip columnist was tougher than any angry call she'd ever received from an enraged publicist. In her autobiography, released this week by Scribner, Walls reveals a sad and sometimes tragic childhood that few but her closest friends knew about.

In the opening pages of “The Glass Castle,” Walls recalls watching someone else do a little digging — her mother, searching through a garbage dumpster in lower Manhattan. Walls wastes little time unveiling the dichotomy that is her life — a high-profile Park Avenue reporter with a  unconventional and often tragic past that followed her from the hollows of West Virginia to Manhattan.

“The Glass Castle” is a no-holds barred tale of a nomadic, deprived childhood told with the hypnotic wonderment of a child who always wants to believe that Daddy will be a hero in the end and that Momma really does know best. You are enrapt reading about Walls and her siblings rifling through trash cans at school looking for food, doing the skedaddle in the middle of the night, or waiting for Dad to come home after another bender. It's a riveting story and a testament to Walls' indomitable desire to rise above a life that could have easily turned her into just another tragic headline.

WALLS ON ‘THE GLASS CASTLE’ Jeannette Walls’ reaction to her memoir While I was writing “The Glass Castle”, I kept asking myself, ‘Who is going to care about the life story of some pathetic little girl and her wacky family?’ Sure, my past was eventful, but it was so different from most, that I was afraid no one would connect with it. I would just seem a little freakish. For a memoir to work, I believe, the writer’s experiences have to resonate with others people’s. Who could relate to someone who slept in a cardboard box, often went hungry and ended up living on Park Avenue while her parents went homeless? Perhaps the thing that has shocked me most about the reception to “The Glass Castle” has been how so many people have connected to the story. “Sure, my life wasn’t quite as dramatic as yours,” they say, or words to that effect, “but there are elements that reminded me of my own story.” Then they reveal stunningly intimate details about their own lives, sometimes things that they had never told anyone before. And I see the person in a new light — always in a more positive sympathetic way. Whenever I hear someone’s personal history, it always makes me like them more — even if the information is supposedly negative. It helps me understand them. I suppose that’s one of the reasons I enjoy being a gossip columnist. But the ironic thing is that I didn’t realize that people would respond that way to my story, too.

Walls said she tried for years to recount her colorful childhood.

“I started it before and every time I ended up throwing it away,” Walls said. With encouragement from her husband, writer John Taylor, she finally decided to tell the tale. “Writing this story was a little like diving off the high dive — once you’re up there you just have to do it," she says.

But even after completing the book, Walls still had some trepidation about how it would be received, by the public, her colleagues and most especially her family.

“I feel like ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’,” Walls said. “I found out that people are incredibly compassionate and kind. It really changed my view of the world.”

From her family, the reviews are mixed. Her brother Brian was very supportive. “He has a steel trap memory so he was good for bouncing things off of,” Walls said.

David Friedman / MSNBC.com Jeannette Walls has been delivering The Scoop on MSNBC.com since 1999.

Older sister Lori was not so happy about having her childhood exposed. But according to Walls, she is gradually warming to it and has enjoyed reading it.

Walls' father is deceased now, but her mother has loved the publicity.

Walls tells the story from the point of view of herself as a child, recalling the events as she saw them at each respective age. Scavenger hunts in the desert and late-night escapes from the family's latest town are treated as adventures.

She jumps right in, opening Chapter 2 with a chilling quote: “I was on fire.” Just 3 years old Walls watched flames inch up from the hem of her favorite pink dress as she tried to make herself a hot dog.

When asked by the nurses at the hospital why a 3-year-old was cooking, the injured child responds, “Mom says I'm mature for my age and she lets me cook for myself a lot.” She passes no judgment on a mother who was so consumed with her latest painting she couldn't be bothered to cook for her child.

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