When they finally landed in Rex's Appalachian hometown of Welch, the family lived in a three-room house without plumbing or heat.

[3] With the aid of grants, loans, scholarships and a year spent answering phones at a Wall Street law firm, she was able to earn a bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts from Barnard College.

[4] Early in her career Walls interned at a Brooklyn newspaper called The Phoenix and eventually became a full-time reporter there.

In 2009, Walls published her first novel, Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel, based on the life of her grandmother Lily Casey Smith.

Walls has spun another rich story that spotlights, as she said in a recent interview, 'people with dreams and vulnerabilities, tough folk in rough situations.'

[17] She married fellow New York [magazine] writer John J. Taylor in 2002,[17] and the couple now lives outside Culpeper, Virginia, on a 205-acre farm.