Profile: Jeannette Walls

THE SILVER STARThe NYT Magazine profiles author Jeannette Walls this week. Her 2005 memoir, The Glass Castle, an “instant classic … has sold 4.2 million copies and been translated into 31 languages.” Her second, a novel based on the story of her grandmother’s hard-scrabble life in the West, Half Broke Horses, was also a best-seller, even if it did not achieve quite the level of an instant classic.

Her third book, a novel, The Silver Star,(S&S/Scribner; S&S Audio; Thorndike Large Print) deals with a theme familiar from her previous books, children growing up with parents who are, at best, neglectful. It’s a subject she knows well, having overcome a childhood that the NYT says would “have flattened others.”  As she says in the interview, “One of the blessings of my childhood was being a fighter and a scrapper.” Appropriately, the title of the profile is “How Jeannette Walls Spins Good Stories Out of Bad Memories.”

The Silver Star is an IndieNext Pick for June. The author is scheduled to appear on CBS This Morning on June 11, the book’s release date.

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