Jeannette Walls was raised below the poverty level, by itinerant parents who drifted from one small dessert town to another taking odd jobs and living on the fringe of society. Her mother, an artist, believed that the children should raise themselves and as such left them to dumpster dive for food and bath at will. Her father, a chronic alcoholic, dreamed of hitting it big one day with one of his schemes, drank and gambled away the majority of his earnings and was often on the run from the authorities. Jeannette describes the poverty in which she and her siblings lived, and how they escaped the dysfunction of their family situation.