Jeannette spots her mother dressed in rags and rummaging through a dumpster from a passing New York City taxi.

Three-year-old Jeannette suffers serious burns on her stomach and ribs after cooking hot dogs unsupervised on the stove.

Dad rouses the family in the middle of the night to pack up and flee the Arizona trailer park.

Dad describes his plans to build the Glass Castle, a self-sufficient solar-powered home made entirely of glass.

Mom gives birth to baby Maureen in Blythe, California, and Jeannette promises to always take care of her.

Billy Deel attempts to rape eight-year-old Jeannette in a shed during a neighborhood game of Hide and Seek.

Police arrive after a BB gun attack and demand a court appearance, so Dad moves the family to Phoenix overnight.

Dad loses a series of jobs in Phoenix and drunkenly sets the family's Christmas tree on fire on Christmas Eve.

Jeannette asks Dad to quit drinking as her birthday gift, and Dad endures a week of agonizing withdrawal.

The family moves to Welch, West Virginia, the impoverished coal-mining town where Dad grew up.

Jeannette catches Erma sexually abusing Brian, leading the family to suspect Erma had also abused Dad as a child.

Dad uses Jeannette as sexual bait to hustle a pool player named Robbie, who then attempts to rape her.

Dad steals the entire contents of the siblings' escape fund, a piggy bank they named Oz.

Jeannette leaves Welch on a morning bus after her junior year to begin a new life in New York City.

Dad suffers a fatal heart attack, and the family later gathers for Thanksgiving dinner to toast his memory.

The memoir opens with adult Jeannette spotting her homeless mother rummaging through a dumpster in New York City, which sends her into a long flashback of her chaotic childhood. As the daughter of a brilliant but alcoholic father and a self-absorbed artist mother, Jeannette grows up in improvised homes across the Southwest, learning early to romanticize deprivation. After narrowly escaping a sexual assault in Battle Mountain, the family flees to Phoenix, where Dad's worsening alcoholism destroys any hope of stability. The family then relocates to Dad's poverty-stricken hometown of Welch, West Virginia, where Jeannette's childhood illusions about her father are shattered by his cruelty and neglect. Determined to escape, Jeannette builds a new life in New York as a journalist while her parents descend into homelessness. Dad dies of a heart attack, and the surviving family gathers to honor his memory at a final Thanksgiving dinner.

The headline events of the Walls family's chaotic journey from the Southwest to New York.

Dad absconds with Jeannette from the hospital in the middle of the night, smelling of whiskey.

Jeannette falls out of the moving Green Caboose while an intoxicated Dad drives the family toward Las Vegas.

The family's San Francisco flophouse burns down after Jeannette plays with matches in the bathroom.

Mom stops to paint an ancient Joshua tree and forbids Jeannette from protecting a small sapling from the wind.

Dad loses his job at the gypsum factory and gives Jeannette the planet Venus as her Christmas gift.

Jeannette and Brian accidentally set an abandoned shed on fire, and Dad rescues Brian from the burning building.

Mom dangles from an upstairs windowsill during a massive overnight fight with Dad about who should get a job.

The family learns Grandma Smith has died and that Mom has inherited a large house and money in Phoenix.

Dad climbs a fence at the Phoenix zoo to pet a cheetah through the bars and invites Jeannette to do the same.

The family's car breaks down 80 miles from Phoenix when Dad tries to see how fast it will go.

Erma kicks the entire family out of her basement after Lori slaps her back, and the family moves to Little Hobart Street.

Jeannette and Brian build a mattress catapult to bombard neighborhood bully Ernie Goad and his gang with rocks.

Lori's National Merit Scholarship attempt is ruined when a trucker assaults her while she hitchhikes to the qualifying exam.

Jeannette convinces Brian and Maureen to leave Welch and join her and Lori in New York City.

Mom and Dad arrive in New York in a broken-down van and eventually become homeless after Lori is forced to evict them.

The memoir's earliest flashbacks reveal the precarious nature of the Walls family's existence, from Dad sneaking Jeannette out of the hospital to a string of cross-country misadventures through the Southwest. Mom's philosophy that struggle builds character is embodied when she refuses to let Jeannette protect a Joshua tree sapling, insisting that hardship is what makes living things beautiful. The family's longest stretch of stability in Battle Mountain unravels when Dad loses his job, triggering starvation and a massive fight that finally forces Mom to take a teaching position. A move to the large house Mom inherits in Phoenix offers a fresh start, but Dad's inability to hold a job leads to new chaos, including a near-fatal drunken road trip. The family's eventual move to Welch, West Virginia brings fresh indignities, and the siblings must overcome one obstacle after another before escaping to New York. Their parents follow uninvited and eventually become homeless, sleeping on park benches after Lori is forced to evict them.

Significant moments of adventure, instability, and escape that shaped the Walls children's upbringing.

Dad pawns Mom's wedding ring without her permission to fund the family's travels through the Southwest.

On Brian's birthday, Dad takes him to a motel and spends the time in the bedroom with a Green Lantern prostitute named Ginger.

A man climbs through an open window of the Phoenix house and molests Jeannette while she sleeps.

Jeannette defends Erma against a racial slur charge, but Mom refuses to back her up out of fear of eviction.

Dad instructs Jeannette to fill the hole she dug as the Glass Castle's foundation with the family's mounting garbage.

Brian catches Mom secretly eating a chocolate bar under a blanket while the children go hungry; she says she is a sugar addict.

Uncle Stanley masturbates while touching Jeannette's thigh; when Jeannette tells Mom, she dismisses the assault as harmless.

A social worker's visit prompts Jeannette to pressure Mom into taking a teaching job to prevent the state from splitting up the family.

Jeannette joins the school newspaper, finds a mentor in Miss Bivens, and resolves to become a journalist.

Dad whips Jeannette with his belt in genuine anger for the first time after she talks back to Mom.

Jeannette tells Dad directly that he will never build the Glass Castle as she prepares to leave Welch for good.

Jeannette becomes a full-time newspaper reporter in New York and later earns a scholarship to study journalism at Barnard College.

Dad is hospitalized with tuberculosis and, sober for the first time in years, reflects on chaos theory and the existence of God.

Maureen stabs Mom during an argument about moving out and is sentenced by a judge to a psychiatric hospital upstate.

Dad calls Jeannette and asks her to visit, revealing that he is dying; they reminisce about the Glass Castle together.

The Glass Castle is shaped by a series of pivotal moments of betrayal and revelation that slowly force Jeannette to confront the truth about her parents. Small but significant betrayals accumulate throughout childhood, from Dad secretly pawning Mom's wedding ring to exploiting his son's birthday for a tryst with a prostitute. Life in Welch, West Virginia strips away any remaining romanticism, as Jeannette is forced to manage the household finances, witnesses her mother's hypocrisy, and endures sexual abuse that her mother dismisses. Jeannette's attachment to her father finally breaks when he beats her in genuine anger, empowering her to resolve to escape Welch and confront Dad with the truth about the Glass Castle. In New York, Jeannette builds a successful journalism career while a stunning revelation about her mother's concealed million-dollar land inheritance reframes decades of suffering as a possible choice. The pool closes with Maureen's violent breakdown and Dad's quiet final confession to Jeannette that he is dying.

The key betrayals, discoveries, and decisions that forced Jeannette to confront the truth about her family.