Jeannette Walls
1 book analyzed
Biography
Jeannette Walls was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1960 and grew up exactly as described in the memoir — a nomadic childhood in the Southwest and Appalachian West Virginia, with Rex and Rose Mary Walls as her parents. She attended Barnard College in New York, paid for largely by herself, and became a successful journalist and gossip columnist for New York magazine. She was engaged to writer John Taylor and later married writer and farmer John Gillam. She lived for years in a Manhattan apartment and did not write the memoir until her friends knew the truth about her parents — Rose Mary Walls, when told Jeannette was writing about their family, said 'Just tell the truth.' The memoir was published in 2005 and spent more than 261 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, ultimately becoming one of the best-selling memoirs of the century.