This is a startling memoir of a successful journalist's journey from the deserted and dusty mining towns of the American Southwest, to an antique filled apartment on Park Avenue. Jeanette Walls narrates her nomadic and adventurous childhood with her dreaming, 'brilliant' but alcoholic parents. At the age of seventeen she escapes on a Greyhound bus to New York with her older sister; her younger siblings follow later. After pursuing the education and civilisation her parents sought to escape, Jeanette eventually succeeds in her quest for the 'mundane, middle class existence' she had always craved. In her apartment, overlooked by 'a portrait of someone else's ancestor' she recounts poignant remembered images of star watching with her father, juxtaposed with recollections of irregular meals, accidents and police-car chases and reveals her complex feelings of shame, guilt, pity and pride toward her parents.

珍妮特·沃爾斯（Jeannette Walls），美國著名記者。撰有《閑聊：流言世界的內幕》、《閑聊：流言如何變成新聞，新聞怎樣成為另一場秀》等書。2005年齣版迴憶錄《玻璃城堡》，首次公開自己鮮為人知、與眾不同的傢庭背景和成長經曆，憑藉此書蜚聲文壇。

現與丈夫約翰·泰勒（John Taylor）長住紐約城和長島。