As a child, Jeannette Walls lives a nomadic life with her painter mother Rose Mary, her intelligent but irresponsible father Rex, older sister Lori, and younger brother Brian.

At the hospital, a doctor and social worker question her home life, but Rex distracts the staff and escapes with Jeannette.

The family soon includes Jeannette’s infant sister Maureen, and remains on the move for years, eventually relocating to a dilapidated house in Utah.

He assaults the lifeguard, forcing the family – now pursued by the law and with no money – to go to Welch, West Virginia, where the children meet their grandparents and uncle Stanley.

When the family has not eaten in days, Rex takes their remaining money to buy food, but returns home drunk after a fight.

Attending college in NYC, she faces financial difficulties and prepares to drop out, but Rex arrives with a pile of gambling winnings, telling her to follow her dreams.

At her engagement party, Jeannette discovers that her parents have owned valuable land – now worth almost $1 million – since she was a child, but chose never to sell.

The following Thanksgiving, Jeannette – now a freelance writer living alone – celebrates with her family, reminiscing about Rex’s unconventional life.

In April 2012, Lionsgate was reported to have acquired the rights to the book and Jennifer Lawrence was in talks to star in the film.

[4] In October 2013, it was noted that director Destin Daniel Cretton was in talks to direct the film and re-write the screenplay with Andrew Lanham from a previous draft by Marti Noxon.

[2] In North America, The Glass Castle was released alongside The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature and Annabelle: Creation, and was projected to gross around $5 million from 1,461 theaters in its opening weekend.

The website's critical consensus reads, "The Glass Castle has an affecting real-life story and a hard-working cast in its corner, but they aren't enough to outweigh a fundamentally misguided approach to the material.

[16] Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers said the film "peddles easy uplift instead of cold, hard truths" and gave it two stars out of four, saying, "Hollywood has a knack for sanitizing books that deserve better.