"; if(is_file("header.php")) include "header.php"; else include "../header.php"; ?>

Overcoming Skedaddle Perhaps it was a fierce intelligence that lifted Jeannette Walls out of the well of despair into which her "parents" were forever dipping her (an apt metaphor considering her first swimming lesson). I put quotes around the word parents in the last sentence because, in this riveting memoir, it is the children who do the actual parenting. Young Jeannette, eager to get to school in the morning, would frst have to drag her mother out of bed and send her off to school as well. Mom, you see, was a teacher -- a teacher who didn't care to go to work, even if it meant that her children would not eat for days on end. She was, she said, an artist. When confronted, Mom would whine, suggesting her young children find work themselves. Almost immediately, they do. Jeannette, especially, displays an unerring ambition, and the reader wants to applaud as we see her turning toward a full belief in her abilities as both parent to her parents and then as a writer, which she understands immediately will be her ticket to respectability and, possibly, riches. During the book (I couldn't put it down for a minute), there were several times I wanted to slap both parents, intensely feeling the pure disgust the children had to hide. I imagine fear of the unknown, of being taken away and put into foster homes, made hiding that disgust imperative. Coming clean here, however, Ms. Walls brilliantly succeeds in illuminating that which makes her father and mother quite special, apart from the normal loyalty blindly afforded one's family. Both parents are obviously bright, though lacking even a glimmer of responsibility. It is clear that the children have inherited this intelligence but . . . will they survive on this alone? Can they? Every setback becomes an invitation for Dad to climb back into the bottle and for Mom, obssessed with observing and recording the world around her, to be guilted into returning to teaching, a job she hates . . . Because it's a job. The most heart-wrenching part of this book for me was, oddly enough, a scene where a young Jeannette, possessing only two pair of threadbare pants, colors her skin with matching magic markers to simulate the "patches" the family could not afford. We are talking bone-crushing poverty here. A passage where her father takes her to a bar and uses his young daughter as bait for a man he intends to beat at pool -- allowing the man to take the young girl upstairs after he's fleeced him out of $80, placed Dad beyond the pale of redemption for me. And I kept waiting for Jeannette to feel the same way. Being a streetsmart survivor who can handle anyting isn't enough. This is a child we're talking about. It's one horror after another. Yet, through the tenacity of the children and the creativity of their parents, we know they will somehow be all right. In fact, we already know at the beginning that Jeannette will do well for herself in life. This fact, however, does not stop us from rooting for these kids the whole way, binding the reader to them as they slowly break from those who would betray them, while still loving them, and find their own adult lives elsewhere (New York City), where we know they can do nothing but improve their lives. One after another, Jeannette and her siblings move to Manhattan and, through hard work, immediately attain a measure of the domestic security that was denied them from the time they were born. Jeannette, in a section that reads almost as if she is embarrassed to be recognized for her talent and intelligence, receives an Ivy League scholarship and advances quickly in Manhattan, eventually chronicling the social lives of the rich and famous from her Park Avenue apartment. Park Avenue! What a transition from the damp, moldy confines of a broken down up-hollow shack in West Virginia. However, Mom and Dad miss the comfort of child labor. Having only themselves to rely upon has apparently caused them to realize their limitations and dependence upon their own children. They do not intend to let their little breadwinners get fully away from them. These characters are indelible. I did not want the book to end. In fact, I found the ending rather abrupt with several unanswered questions. What becomes of the fragile Maureen? What becomes of the land in Texas? Overall, though, this memoir is a rich, satisfying read and a testament to the spirit people like Jeannette Walls and her siblings use to somehow elevate themselves above the dark side of their heritage. Going along for the ride, we find ourselves elevated as well.