Everybody has anecdotes about their “crazy family” but the story Jeannette Walls tells about hers in The Glass Castle (Scribner, 2005) would beat most. She, her brother and two sisters are raised by parents who are both disengaged (to the point of providing no food, clean clothes, habitable shelter or protection from sexual predators) and fiercely in love with their family. Repeatedly “doing the skedaddle,” the family moves from place to place and ever worsening circumstances. Ultimately, the children escape to better lives. Written without self-pity and describing remarkable self-reliance, Walls’ memoir shows us a world most of us try to look past.