Plot summary

The life of writer/reporter Jeannette Walls is dramatized, what presented especially in relation to how her growing up shaped that life and thus who she is as a person. That growing up is a non-traditional one. Her mother, Rose Mary Walls, is more concerned with her painting as something that "will last forever" than the short term issues of taking care of the family including Jeannette and her three siblings. But the household is dominated by her father, Rex Walls for who family is everything. A brilliant man academically, he can wax poetic about almost any topic, and dreams big which can inspire his children. The biggest dream is to build a ''Utopian" glass castle in which the family can live for eternity. He is also anti-authority, anti-establishment, controlling, often going to extremes to prove a point, and does not tolerate anyone else's viewpoint against his, especially his children. Exacerbated by his alcoholism, he is unable to hold a job, which results in the family often moving, sometimes going days without food in having no money, often squatting, that latter issue more a choice in his and Rose Mary's empty nest years, and never following through with those big dreams. As Jeanette is able to escape from her parents to eke out a life of her own out of their grip as a young adult, she will have to choose how much access she will have to them, especially as she gets engaged to "establishment" financial analyst David, an antithesis to everything Rex in particular espouses.—Huggo