Summary Dad’s mom, Erma, dies and the entire family goes to the funeral. While Mom tries to get the kids to kiss the corpse, Dad fidgets with his necktie. After the funeral he goes on a four-day drinking binge and on the fourth day Mom sends Jeannette into town to […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 3: Welch Sections 13-17Summary and Analysis Part 3: Welch Sections 10-12
Summary Spring comes to Welch and makes life a little easier for the Walls family. For one, the longer days means the family can read longer into the evening, since they often do not have electricity. For Lori, reading is a form of escape and she immerses herself in fantasy […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 3: Welch Sections 10-12Summary and Analysis Part 3: Welch Sections 7-9
Summary Shortly after moving into the tiny house on Little Hobart Street, Dad plots out a spot to build the Glass Castle. Brian and Jeannette, eager to make this vision a reality, start digging the foundation. They carve out and smooth a large section of earth; however, the family cannot […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 3: Welch Sections 7-9Summary and Analysis Part 3: Welch Sections 5-6
Summary Mom and Dad decide to drive back to Phoenix to pick up belongings they had left behind. Jeannette wishes she could go with them and all the kids harbor a silent fear that Mom and Dad will not come back, especially since they hate life with Erma. One day, […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 3: Welch Sections 5-6Summary and Analysis Part 3: Welch Sections 3-4
Summary Mom takes Brian and Jeannette to school to enroll, even though she never acquired their records from their school in Phoenix. The three of them meet with the principal who asks them simple questions to test their intelligence. However, due to their dissimilar accents, the principal can’t understand their […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 3: Welch Sections 3-4Summary and Analysis Part 3: Welch Sections 1-2
Summary The family drifts slowly across the country because their rundown clunker can’t go over 20 miles per hour. When they arrive in tiny Welch, West Virginia a month later, the kids meet their paternal grandparents, Erma and Ted, for the first time, as well as their Uncle Stanley. Erma […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 3: Welch Sections 1-2Summary and Analysis Part 2: The Desert Sections 26-27
Summary Jeannette’s father asks her what she wants for her tenth birthday and Jeannette, though a bit nervous about it, speaks from her heart: she wants Dad to stop drinking. Dad, having promised her whatever she wants, agrees and ties himself to his bed for a week of withdrawal. Slowly, […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 2: The Desert Sections 26-27Summary and Analysis Part 2: The Desert Sections 24-25
Summary After a few months, city life starts getting to Dad. He hates the order as well as what he sees as a pervasive and incorrect view of wildlife. For example, when he reads in the newspaper that police have shot a mountain lion in someone’s backyard, he takes the […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 2: The Desert Sections 24-25Summary and Analysis Part 2: The Desert Sections 22-23
Summary Jeannette and her siblings marvel at their new home in Phoenix — a 14-room stucco house with orange trees in the backyard — and can’t believe their good fortune. The three older children enroll in a public school and Lori, Brian, and Jeannette have their first ear and eye […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 2: The Desert Sections 22-23Summary and Analysis Part 2: The Desert Sections 20-21
Summary Jeannette is displeased when the new kid in town, Billy Deel, three years older than her and a troublemaker, decides he wants her for a girlfriend (although she is secretly flattered by the attention). Billy has a reputation for skinning animals and wreaking havoc. One day Billy comes over […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 2: The Desert Sections 20-21