Jeannette Walls
Jeannette Walls, the author of the phenomenally successful “The Glass Castle” and four other books, is the featured speaker at a special program sponsored by the Friends of the Washington County Public Library in Abingdon, Virginia.
The event is Sunday evening, June 11, beginning at 6 p.m. at Glenrochie Country Club in Abingdon with a social hour, followed by a buffet supper provided by Catherine’s at Glenrochie. Walls then speaks about her new novel, “Hang the Moon,” putting it in the context of her writing career. The evening concludes with book sales and signings by Walls.
Walls began her writing career as a journalist and gossip columnist in New York for Esquire, New York magazine, and MSNBC. She gained fame for her 2005 memoir, “The Glass Castle,” about her eccentric, hardscrabble childhood, in the deserts of the American Southwest, but predominantly in Welch, West Virginia.
The most memorable characters from “The Glass Castle” are her parents. Rex Walls was an alcoholic, a drifter and a dreamer. The title of the memoir comes from his plans to build a solar-powered glass castle for his family. Rose Mary Walls was an artist, a free spirit, a schizophrenic, who was always challenging societal norms. After the four Walls children were dragged around the country, frequently homeless and destitute, they ended up in Welch, where Rex had grown up.
The children escaped to New York City one by one and made lives for themselves in spite of their childhood deprivations. The opening line of “The Glass Castle” is one of the most famous in contemporary American writing: “I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.”
“The Glass Castle” became one of the most astounding publishing successes of recent decades—461 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and translated into 35 languages. It was made into a movie with Woody Harrelson (as Rex), Naomi Watts (as Rose Mary) and Brie Larson (as Jeannette).
Walls moved to the Charlottesville, Virginia, area following the publication of “The Glass Castle” with her husband John Taylor, who is also a writer. In 2009 Walls published her first novel, “Half-Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel,” based on the life of her grandmother Lily Casey Smith, followed by “The Silver Star” in 2013.
In March of this year, “Hang the Moon” was published, her first book in a decade. It is set in central Virginia during the Prohibition years about the heroine, Sallie Kincaid, who is ambitious to succeed her father as the leading whiskey runner in the area.
Walls based the character on Willie Carter Sharpe from Franklin County, Virginia, who was so notorious that she was given the title, “Queen of the Roanoke Rumrunners.” Walls also said that she was inspired by the Tudor Dynasty in England, where Queen Elizabeth was underestimated in her youth.
Tickets to the event are $50 and can be purchased on the website of the Washington County Virginia Public Library, www.wcpl.net.
The Friends of the Washington County Public Library is a voluntary, non-profit organization whose activities have included raising funds to improve library facilities, taking a firm stand in support of intellectual freedom, sponsoring literary and cultural events, and providing financial support for special projects.
For more information about the event, call 276-492-2013.
