Being a single mother is never easy, but for Charlotte Holladay, a wannabe folk singer in 1970, raising her 15- and 12-year-old daughters, Liz and Jean (aka Bean ), is more than she can handle. Known for dropping out when things get tough, Charlotte's latest spell of parental abandonment attracts police attention and the girls flee California rather than face being placed in foster care. A cross-country bus trip lands them on the doorstep of their only relative, the previously unmet Uncle Tinsley, and their arrival proves to be as much of a shock for the reclusive widower as it is for the girls themselves. As the trio learns to coexist, Liz and Bean try to fit into the small southern town. With money tight, they land jobs with mill foreman Jerry Maddox, an overbearing brute who runs roughshod over the town's residents and takes advantage of Liz's trusting nature, with devastating results. Readers familiar with Walls' backstory from her luminous memoir, The Glass Castle (2005), will recognize elements of her personal history in this captivating, read-in-one-sitting, coming-of-age adventure.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2010 Booklist

Readers of Walls's bestselling memoir The Glass Castle may find this new novel too familiar to be entirely satisfying. When 12-year-old Bean Holladay and her 15-year-old sister, Liz, are abandoned by their narcissistic, unstable mother, Charlotte, they make their way to Byler, Va., Charlotte's hometown, in search of an uncle they barely know. In Byler, Bean and Liz find not only their uncle, Tinsley, but also a community eager to see how Charlotte's girls have turned out. The sisters attract particular attention from Jerry Maddox, foreman at the town mill, which the Holladays owned and operated in better times. Walls understands in her bones how growing up with a mentally ill parent can give children extraordinary skills and resilience but also leave them without any sense of the boundary between ordinary behavior and abuse. It's clear from the beginning that Bean and Liz's relationship with Maddox won't end well, and their newfound family may not be able to sustain the damage. When Bean reads To Kill a Mockingbird in school, she seems like a long-lost cousin to Scout, and to the young Walls herself. The other characters are too often thinly conceived, but she makes for a strong and spunky protagonist. Agent: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, WME Entertainment. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Best-selling memoirist Walls's (The Glass Castle) first novel is a bildungsroman set in 1970 that delves into issues of racism and bigotry, bullies, neglect, and the love of family. The star of this novel is Jean "Bean" Holladay, the 12-year-old narrator. She is a fully fleshed character who is reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird's Scout Finch. Pivotal to this story is the relationship Bean has with her older sister, Liz, who has been the source of stability in Bean's life. When tragedy strikes Liz, the roles reverse as Bean stands by her sister no matter the outcome. Walls performs the narration herself, and while it is smooth, the variations among characters are very subtle, so readers might get sidetracked or confused if not paying close attention. VERDICT For fans of heartwarming fiction such as Harper Lee's classic and Walls's other books. ["This engrossing story is told with the warmth and humor that will appeal to fans of Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees. Readers will find themselves rooting for the spunky heroine and her smart, offbeat sister as they persevere in the face of multiple hardships," read the starred review of the New York Times best-selling Scribner hc, LJ 6/15/13.-Ed.]-Stephanie Charlefour, Wixom P.L., MI (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.