The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls

The Glass Castle is a 2005 memoir by Jeannette Walls detailing the harsh but passionate wanderings of her childhood with siblings Brian, Lori, and Maureen, their father Rex and mother Rose Mary — as the family shuttled from Arizona, California, Battle Mountain, Nevada and Welch, West Virginia — with periods of homelessness, Walls' ultimate move to New York City at age 17, and her later successful writing career.
Using a straightforward, non-judgmental style, the memoir recounts the parents' difficulty and unwillingness to provide their family's daily needs — while at the same time feeding their sense of adventure and intellectual curiosity. On the one hand, the children fend for themselves for food and clothing — on the other hand, their brilliant, alcoholic father illuminates for them physicist Mitchell Feigenbaum's study of chaos theory.