Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

Ratings Explanation

Language:  EVERY profane and vulgar word imaginable is used – most often spoken by Rex Walls, Jeannette’s father.

Violence:  Jeannette and her brother, Brian are beat up by a group of Mexican girls while they are in elementary school in Arizona.   Billy Deel, a neighbor boy, breaks a window in their home with the butt of his BB Gun to confront Jeannette who denied his advances.  He fires his BB Gun and shoots at the children, who are home alone.  Lori, Jeannette’s older sister, grabs her father’s pistol and shoots at Billy.  Jeannette takes the pistol from Lori and continues to shoot at Billy- thankfully missing.   Arguments between an alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother are intense.  While drinking, Rex, the father pulls a knife on his wife.  He also hangs her out of a second story window.  In another intense argument, Rose Mary, her mother jumps out of a moving car and runs into the darkened desert.  Rex chases her down in the car, yelling vulgarities at her, he corners her with the car against rocks, and then drags Rose Mary back into the car.  When they move to Welch, Jeanette is then beat up daily by a group of girls while in fifth grade.  While in West Virginia neighborhood bullies throw a rock through their window pane.  One of Jeanette’s rare friends, Dinitia Hewitt, becomes pregnant.  A few months later Dinitia is arrested for stabbing her mother’s boyfriend to death.

Sexuality:  Rex visits a prostitute, with Brian, his young son in tow.  Eight year old Jeannette is groped by Billy Deel who then brags that he raped her.  While Billy Deel’s father is asleep in a drunken stupor, Jeannette sees his penis hanging out of his pants.  Ten year old Jeannette is groped again, while sleeping in her home.  (Parents insist on sleeping with the doors open in the summertime – while living in an urban area.)  Uncle Stanley masturbates in front of Jeanette while trying to creep his hand down her leg.  Grandma Erma inappropriately touches Brian.  Rose Mary’s classic response, “Sexual assualt is a crime of perception.”

Adult Themes:  The father, Rex, is an alcoholic, and the mother, Rose Mary, is mentally ill.  No money, no food, neglected children – always doing “The Skeedaddle” when bills are due.  Bill collectors, “The Gestapo” are always looking for them.  Rex bristles at any person in authority.  While at the zoo, he rebuffs authority and pets a cheetah.  Pervasive parental negligence, young children are left to care for themselves, they are rarely fed or bathed.  Jeannette at the age of three is severely burned while cooking herself hot dogs for dinner.  She spends weeks in a burn unit.  Brian splits his head open – no medical care.  The children dumpster dive for food.  Rose Mary tells the children to cut the maggots off the ham and then it will be fine to eat.    Jeannette falls out of a moving car and her parents don’t realize she is gone for quite sometime before they return for her.  Her nose is broken, again, no medical care provided.  The four kids, including a brand-new baby ride in the back of a cold U-Haul for a 14 hour drive, with no food, or warmth, while the parents take the scenic route to their destination.  The back doors open while the truck is moving.  Rex tells the children they are lucky because the children could be thrown in jail for riding in the back.  Rex decides to teach Jeannette to swim, he throws her out in a pond and she nearly drowns, every time she swims to the edge for help, he throws her back into the middle.  Rose Mary whips Lori with a paddle in front of her class.  Rose Mary takes her children on a shoplifting trip.  Rex and Rose Mary figure out how to short banks by making a withdrawal inside and outside at the same time.  Rex is tied to a bed with belts and ropes for the better part of a week as he tries to combat his alcoholism.  Jeanette sews stitches to repair a gash on her drunken father’s arm.   Jeanette’s father takes her to a bar as a young teen as a distraction while her father wins money in a pool game.  Rex and Rose Mary don’t pay for coal or electricity.  Their house has icicles on the inside.  The children are hungry and cold.

Synopsis

Four resilient and intelligent children are born to Rose Mary and Rex Walls.   Parents, who grossly fail to provide the basic necessities of life for their children.  Lori, Jeannette, Brian and Maureen learn to care for themselves and each other as their deeply dysfunctional parents struggle with alcoholism and mental illness.  The Walls Family endlessly bounces from no-name towns in Arizona, Nevada and California, in their quest to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors.  They then move to Welch, West Virginia where Rex was raised.  Jeannette, Lori, Brian and Maureen face the overwhelming challenge of “getting out” of Welch and creating successful lives for themselves.  The children move to New York and find success as their parents choose homelessness in New York.  You are as stunned as Jeannette is when you find that they didn’t actually have to live that way – it was a chosen way of life.

I lost a lot of sleep reading Jeannette Wall’s Memoir, as I sat on the edge of the tub reading until the wee hours of the morning, “Just one more chapter”.  The author’s dedication sums it up best, “To John, for convincing me that everyone who is interesting has a past.”  The author truly has a gift for transforming her sad memories into fine art.  This story is an amazing story of resilience.  However, “PROCEED WITH CAUTION”.  This book is one for your extremely mature high school reader.

©2009 The Literate Mother