Author Guide · Memoir and Fiction
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For years Jeannette Walls wrote about other people’s secrets: the “Intelligencer” column at New York magazine, a gossip column at Esquire, then “Scoop” at MSNBC.com. Her own she kept quiet. She was born in Phoenix in 1960, grew up on the move across Arizona, Nevada and California and then in Welch, West Virginia, and put herself through Barnard College while her parents lived on the streets of New York. In 2005 she told that story in The Glass Castle, which stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for more than seven years. Since then she has turned to novels about tough women in hard places, two of them drawn from her own family. This guide covers her five key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 key books · 2000–2023 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Jeannette Walls has published five books: Dish (2000), a history of gossip; The Glass Castle (2005), her memoir; and three novels, Half Broke Horses (2009), The Silver Star (2013) and Hang the Moon (2023). Start with The Glass Castle, then read Half Broke Horses, the story of her grandmother, which shows where her mother came from.
Where to Start with Jeannette Walls
If you want her defining book
→ The Glass Castle (2005) — the memoir of her childhood.
If you want the family story before The Glass Castle
→ Half Broke Horses (2009) — her grandmother’s life on the frontier.
If you want a novel with two sisters on the road
→ The Silver Star (2013).
If you want her most plot-driven book
→ Hang the Moon (2023) — a Prohibition-era family saga.
5 Jeannette Walls Books, in Order
Dish
Her first book, written while she was a gossip columnist for MSNBC.com: a history of the celebrity-news business from Walter Winchell, Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons to Confidential, People and the National Enquirer. It covers publicists, tabloid reporters, checkbook journalism and the celebrities who use the press for their own ends. Kirkus called it “plenty of guilty fun”.
The Glass Castle
The memoir opens with Walls, by then a writer in New York, seeing her mother going through a Dumpster on the street. It then goes back to her childhood with her father Rex, brilliant and alcoholic, her mother Rose Mary, an artist, and three siblings, moving between Arizona, Nevada and California before ending up poor in Welch, West Virginia, until the children leave one by one for New York. It spent more than seven years on the New York Times bestseller list, won an Alex Award and a Christopher Award, and was filmed in 2017.
Half Broke Horses
The life of her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, told in Lily’s own first-person voice: breaking horses with her father as a child, riding about 500 miles alone at fifteen to teach in a frontier town in New Mexico, ranching in Arizona, learning to drive and to fly, and living through droughts and the Depression. Walls calls it a novel because she filled the gaps in family stories with imagination. Lily’s daughter is Rose Mary, the mother of The Glass Castle.
The Silver Star
In 1970 the sisters Bean, twelve, and Liz, fifteen, are left alone in California by their mother Charlotte, a would-be singer and actress. Afraid of foster care, they travel to Byler, Virginia, the mill town their mother came from, to live with their uncle Tinsley in the decaying family house. The novel follows a small Southern town in the year of school integration and the Vietnam War, and a man who threatens Liz.
Hang the Moon
Sallie Kincaid is the daughter of Duke Kincaid, the most powerful man in a small town in Virginia in the early twentieth century. Cast out by her stepmother after an accident with her half-brother Eddie, she returns nine years later, works as her father’s rent collector and, as Prohibition arrives, becomes a bootlegger herself. Walls spent close to a decade on the book.
In What Order to Read Jeannette Walls
Only two of her books are directly connected. Half Broke Horses tells the story of her grandmother and ends where her mother’s adult life begins, so it works as a prequel to The Glass Castle. Most readers come to it second, after the memoir, and that order works well: you already know Rose Mary and see where she came from.
The two other novels stand alone. Dish belongs to her years as a gossip columnist and is mainly of interest if you want to know what she wrote before the memoir.
A reading path
1. The Glass Castle (2005)
2. Half Broke Horses (2009)
3. The Silver Star (2013)
4. Hang the Moon (2023)
The years · 1960–2023
Quick facts about Jeannette Walls
- Known for
- Jeannette Walls is known for The Glass Castle, her memoir of growing up with nomadic, often homeless parents, written after years as a New York gossip columnist.
- 1960
- Born in Phoenix, Arizona
- 1984
- Graduates from Barnard College
- 2005
- The Glass Castle
- 2023
- Hang the Moon
- Born
- 21 April 1960, Phoenix, Arizona
- Education
- Barnard College, 1984, with honours
- Journalism
- New York magazine (1987–1993), Esquire (1993–1998), MSNBC.com (1998–2007)
- Family
- Parents Rex and Rose Mary Walls; sisters Lori and Maureen, brother Brian
- Married
- Eric Goldberg (1988–1996); the writer John J. Taylor (2002)
- Lives
- On a farm outside Culpeper, Virginia
The red mark is 2005: The Glass Castle, the memoir of her childhood.
How Jeannette Walls Writes: Plain Facts, No Self-Pity
Walls learned to write as a reporter, and it shows in the memoir: short scenes, plain sentences, and almost no commentary. The Glass Castle opens with a three-year-old Jeannette badly burned while cooking hot dogs on the stove, and the book lets the reader judge her parents rather than doing it for them. Rex and Rose Mary are funny, clever and loving as well as negligent.
Her novels keep the same subject: girls and women who have to look after themselves because the adults around them will not. Lily Casey Smith in Half Broke Horses, Bean and Liz in The Silver Star and Sallie Kincaid in Hang the Moon are all, in her own words from a 2023 interview, “tough folk in rough situations”.
Half Broke Horses shows the line between her memoir and her fiction most clearly. It is built from family stories and interviews, told in her grandmother’s voice, and Walls calls it a “true-life novel” because she invented what the family did not remember.
Frequently asked questions about Jeannette Walls’s books
How many books has Jeannette Walls written?
Five: Dish (2000), a history of the gossip business; The Glass Castle (2005), her memoir; and three novels, Half Broke Horses (2009), The Silver Star (2013) and Hang the Moon (2023).
What are Jeannette Walls’s books in order?
Dish (2000), The Glass Castle (2005), Half Broke Horses (2009), The Silver Star (2013) and Hang the Moon (2023).
Where should I start with Jeannette Walls?
With The Glass Castle. Then read Half Broke Horses, the story of her grandmother, which explains much about her mother.
What is Jeannette Walls’s most famous book?
The Glass Castle (2005), the memoir of her childhood with her parents Rex and Rose Mary Walls. It stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for more than seven years and has been translated into 31 languages.
Is The Glass Castle a true story?
Yes. It is a memoir of Walls’s own childhood in Arizona, Nevada, California and Welch, West Virginia, and of her parents’ later years homeless in New York.
Is there a film of The Glass Castle?
Yes. The Glass Castle (2017), directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, with Brie Larson as Jeannette, Woody Harrelson as Rex and Naomi Watts as Rose Mary. Part of it was filmed in Welch, West Virginia.
Is Half Broke Horses a sequel to The Glass Castle?
It is a prequel. It tells the life of her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, whose daughter Rose Mary is Walls’s mother. Walls calls it a “true-life novel” because she filled the gaps in the family stories herself.
Why is The Glass Castle challenged in schools?
Parents have objected to its language and to scenes of sexual abuse and violence. The American Library Association listed it as the ninth most challenged book in the United States in 2012, and the seventeenth in 2010 and 2019. A school board in Traverse City, Michigan, removed it from a ninth-grade honours class in 2012 and returned it in 2014.
Is Jeannette Walls still alive?
Yes. She was born on 21 April 1960 in Phoenix, Arizona, and lives with her husband, the writer John J. Taylor, on a farm outside Culpeper, Virginia.
What did Jeannette Walls do before The Glass Castle?
She was a gossip columnist: the “Intelligencer” column at New York magazine from 1987 to 1993, a column at Esquire from 1993 to 1998, and “Scoop” at MSNBC.com from 1998 to 2007. Her first book, Dish (2000), came out of that work.
Footnotes
- Jeannette Walls — Wikipedia
- The Glass Castle — Wikipedia
- Dish — Kirkus Reviews, 2000
- Half Broke Horses — BookBrowse
- The Silver Star — Kirkus Reviews, 2013
- Hang the Moon — Bookreporter
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.”
— Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle (2005), the first line
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