Thanksgiving

Jeanette and her new husband John invite her family over to their farmhouse. This is the first time they have all be together since Rex's death. John and Jeanette pickup Rose Mary and Lori and the train station and return to the house where Brian and his eight year old daughter waited. They reminisce on memories concerning Rex and make a toast to him. They also discuss that Maureen might be visiting soon from California because she had moved there after she was released from the metal institution. I enjoyed this book very much because of the spontaneous comical and tragic events. It was very interesting and allowed me to view things in a way I may never have thought of before.

New York City

Lori and Jeanette move into a fairly nice apartment together and both have jobs and pay rent. Eventually they ask Brian and Maureen to move to the city also because life in Welch had been steadily declining now for a while. Lori, Brian, and Jeanette all find steady jobs and care for themselves while Maureen mooches off of boyfriends. Rex and Rose Mary eventually move to the city also and become squatters because they refuse to get real jobs. Maureen ends up in a mental institution after stabbing Rose Mary and being arrested. Soon after Rex dies of a heart attack and Jeanette takes time to reflect on herself and decides to divorce her husband Eric and move forward.

Welch

Again the family moved, this time to Welch West Virginia. The most notable difference is the challenges that the winter season brings the family. In result of their poor living conditions they have heat problems, water problems, and electricity problems. They meet their grandma, whom they are to call Erma, their grandpa and their uncle Stanley. Erma is downright mean to the children and sexually harasses Brian along with slapping Lori. The children all go to school in Welch and Jeanette begins working on the school newspaper in seventh grade. She continues to do this until she graduates. Home life begins to become so rough all the children want to find ways to escape. Lori decides to move to New York City as soon as she graduates and Jeanette moves down with her after she finishes her junior year. Welch was probably the worst place of all and the children spent the majority of their years growing up there.

Age ten

Rex asks Jeanette what she wants for her birthday and she replies by asking him to stop drinking and stay sober. He tries his best to stay sober and faces delirium from withdrawal. Although then he went missing for a few days. When he returned home he caused a commotion and began breaking things and cursing at the children. Eventually he starts yelling with Rose Mary and they begin wrestling with knives then laugh it off after. This shows you the mind set of these "parents".

Jeanette age eight

At only eight years old Jeanette experiences rape. Her "friend" Billy Deel rapes her and the next day decides to stalk her. Billy stands outside the house calling Jeanette’s name. When Lori tells him to go away he says he told Jeanette she would be sorry and began firing his BB gun. Lori then runs upstairs to grab Rex's pistol and shoot in Bills direction to scare him off. The next day they once again moved. They move into Grandma Smith's old house and Rex lands an electrician job. At this point everything was going good and the children even had bicycles. Rose Mary encourages the children to not conform to society and be unique. Also Rex brings the children to the zoo and brings his children in the cage with a live cheetah and begins petting it. He puts both himself and his children in serious peril by doing so and it doesn’t seem to faze him. Soon after Rex lost his job and the family began falling apart once again. Food was scarce and because of the lack of income Rose Mary had taught the children how to shoplift.

Decline of Rex and Rose Mary's New Job

At this point Rex has lost his job and he has begun disappearing a lot also. The children begin to fend for themselves even it meant stealing. The children even resort to eating butter because they are so hungry. When Rex gets home one night he and Rose Mary begin arguing over the money issue and the argument escalates to painting being thrown out the window. Somehow Rose Mary ends up dangling from the second floor and Rex tries to pull her in. Rose Mary accuses him of trying to her kill her and he says that she jumped. The children are not affected by the fight because to them it’s normal by now. Rose Mary finds a teaching job and is said to be a bad teacher for not being able to control her classroom. When the principal threatens to fire her, Lori and Jeanette begin helping her grade papers and create lesson plans. The children believed that because their mom had a job they would have food and be able to buy new clothes. Although not to their suprise Rex had been escorting Mary Rose to the bank to cash her check and then using the money for himself.

Elementary School

Rex received a job as an electrician at a barite mine. He spends time with the children and teaches them how to play all kinds of games. The children are enrolled in elementary school and Jeanette begins staying after countless days for her teacher Miss Page. She stays after to do homework that Rex had taught her how to do incorrectly. The children have few restrictions and are only warned to use their common sense at all times and be home before the street lights are on. Jeanette begins collecting rocks and making necklaces for her mother. Jeanette and Brian take trips to the dump and are both fascinated with the wide spectrum of items they find. They even wander through the toxic and hazard area of the dump. The children are never given money so they collect and return cans and bottles. They then usually spend their earnings on penny candy at a local drugstore. One day on their way home from the drugstore there was a woman sitting on the porch of what their mother liked to call a "cat house". Brian talked to the women and as she stroked his hair. He declares that she was sort of nice.

Battle Mountain

The baby is born and it's a girl. Rex and Rose Mary name her Lily Ruth Maureen, after their own mother's names. For a while they live in a town called Blythe until a cop tries to pull Rex over for having no brake lights. Rex refused to stop and caused a high speed chase. The next day they leave for a town called Battle Mountain. The family rents a U-Haul truck for the few items they own and the four children including the newborn, Marueen, must sit in the back. They hit a pothole and the backdoor flew open. Brian tried to close it but feared he would fallout himself so he retreated. They stop and close the door and continue their journey. When they reach Battle Mountain they move into a wooden apartment and the children sleep in cardboard boxes. The family decides they need a piano and Rex buys one a cheap as he could find. They bring it home in a neighbor’s pickup although it ends up in the back yard because of Rose Mary's miscalculation.

The Fire

The Wall's family lived in Las Vegas for about a month then decided to move to San Francisco. The family stays in a motel while Rex and Rose are out looking for investment money. Jeanette finds matchs and begins lighting them and putting them out. A few days later Jeanette wakes up to the smell of fire and calls for Lori and Brian. A few seconds later dad burst in and wraps her in a blanket and leads them out of the motel. After the fire the family slept on beaches and in the car. The next place they travel to is Mojave desert where Rex brings the children demon hunting. Rose Mary announces she is pregnant and everyone hopes it is a boy for Brian. At this point Rose Mary spends most of her time painting pictures of the Joshua tree.

The Green Caboose

The Family replaces the Blue Caboose with another car, in which they call the Green Caboose. The children count how many places they have lived so far and they count eleven towns. On their travels Rose Mary and Rex run in the bar and grab the kid's dinner. They bring out beef jerky and a candy bar for each child. They continue their journey while Rex drinks his beer and drives. Suddenly they take a sharp turn and Jeanette's door flies open and she falls out. When Jeanette gather's herself she waits for her parents to return. She begins thinking of Quixote, and believes she is a burden just as the cat was. At this point she begins walking towards houses in a nearby town. She then realizes she should return to the spot where she fell out for fear that her parents would never find her.

The First Move

A few months later Rex, their dad, comes home in the middle of the night and tells them to pack because they are leaving. They leave their mutt Tinkerbelle, but Jeanette manages to bring their cat, Quixote. This is until the cat began fussing and Rex grabbed it and tossed it out the window. This same night they all slept in the dessert, in their car, watching the stars. The family is comparable to nomads in that they began moving frequently in search of odd jobs and food. Rose Mary, Jeanette’s mother, explains it was to get bill collectors off their tail, while Rex claims it was the FBI. In some of these towns the children enrolled in school and other's they didn't. Their parents become their teachers and Rex taught them odd skills like how to tap out Morse code, how to shoot a pistol, how to shoot bow and arrows and hot to throw knifes.

Cooking hotdogs

One of Jeanette’s earliest memories is cooking hotdogs alone at the age of three. As a result of parenting that encouraged independence, Jeanette boiled water and began cooking hotdogs without super vision. As Jeanette tried to feed their dog a piece of hotdog her pink tutu caught fire. In shock Jeanette watched the flames creep up her dress up to her face. Finally she screamed and her mother came running into the room as the fire singed her hair and eyelashes. Her mom ran out and back in with an army surplus blanket to smoother the fire. They hurried to the hospital and the nurses and doctors ask how it had happened and where all the scratches and bruises on her came from. She tells the truth and says they are from playing outside and from cooking hotdogs. She explains that her mother believed her to be mature for her age and allowed her to cook for herself. At this point in the story you can tell the authorities are concerned with the parents and believe them to be endangering the welfare of a child.

The Introduction

The story starts off with the main character Jeanette, in a taxi, when suddenly she sees her mother outside rummaging through a nearby dumpster. Ashamed of her mother's actions she asks the driver to bring her home, in fear of her mother spotting her. When she gets home she begins thinking about her parents and decides to call and arrange for her and her mother to get together for Chinese. When they finally meet up Jeanette can see her mother has tried her best to look presentable for her current living conditions. Jeanette discusses that she wants to help her mother and father change and her mother tells her she her values all wrong and that she needs to accept them they way they are. After this begins a flashback of Jeanette's life stories of growing up with unique parents.