JEANNETTE WALLS (Everybody has a story!)

I loved The Glass Castle! So naturally when I heard Author, Jeannette Walls was coming to my hometown I ignored everything else and showed up at Lenoir Rhyne University.

Mike Collins, host of "Charlotte Talks", a local NPR program, interviewed her for a radio broadcast which you can listen to here.

Or you can get a slightly blurry glimpse here.


Jeannette is funny and wise and has chosen a positive attitude toward her horrendous childhood.

We know that having her book on the NYT best seller list for 100 weeks made Jeannette a rich woman. But she doesn't take material things for granted. To her, flush toilets, the ability to buy groceries, and the chance to take piano lessons is a miracle. I love that about Jeannette, that she can still revel in the small luxuries of life.

And that she can see the upside of down things.

She said:

• On the upside, I'm a fighter and a scrapper. On the downside, I'm a fighter and a scrapper!
• We all have demons. We have to put a harness on our demons, not cast them out!
• I have a great life. Why regret how I got here?
• There are the facts. And then there's the truth.

Jeannette has a new book out, Half-Broke Horses which tells the story of her maternal grandmother. Although it's fictionalized, it too, feels much like a memoir in the telling. Having read her grandmother's story, I can see a bit of what shaped her mother and also what has made Jeannette the resilient person she is.