'The truth will set you free'

For the better part of her adult life, Jeannette Walls had a secret. She hid it from her friends and coworkers. She changed the subject whenever people talked about family. She felt uncomfortable, sometimes even among friends. She was afraid that people would find out.

That secret - the trials of her challenging childhood - is now the topic of a national bestseller. And to her friends, coworkers, and millions of readers nationwide, Walls has become a symbol of perseverance and hope.

In light of her accomplishments as an author, as a journalist, and most of all, as someone who never gave up, Walls told her story to the Boston College community at First Year Academic Convocation on Thursday. As part of the fourth annual "Conversations in the First Year," the 2,250 incoming freshmen read Walls' memoir, The Glass Castle, prior to convocation.

"Writing the book [The Glass Castle] was a horrible, fabulous, excruciating, and cathartic experience," she said in an interview before her address. "We all know things about ourselves that we think we don't know."

Inspired by her mother's advice to simply "tell the truth," Walls delves into memories that are painful, tragic, shocking, and heartwarming. Her checkered past begins in the southwest region of the country, marked by frequent moves as her father bounced from job to job. Whether the family left town on the run from the law, in search of gold, or just to try something new, the one thing consistent in Walls' nomadic early years was her bond with her father.

Rex Walls had his flaws, she concedes, but it was his strong spirit that kept the family together and determined, always striving toward the ultimate goal: building the glass castle. Hope came as a set of blueprints, a promise that one day, the Walls family would move into a fanciful, glass, solar-powered castle. And although the house itself never materialized, Walls sees it now as a symbol of her father's message to dream big.

"At this point, it's neither frustration nor forgiveness that I'm dealing with toward my father," she said. "It's understanding. He's a flawed man, but that he had as much good in him as he did was truly remarkable."

When sober, Rex Walls was a teacher, a companion, and a dreamer. He cultivated his children's imaginations, and he taught them the important lessons of looking out for oneself, caring for one's family, and confronting challenges. He never settled for the easy or the ordinary, and he was always curious - these traits he passed down to his children.

But when he drank, he seemed to forget all these lessons, driving his family into harder and harder times. The family's move to Rex's hometown of Welch, W. Va., left them living in a state of constant poverty, in a primitive house without indoor plumbing.

Walls recalls thinking she could change her father, that she could control him and force him to change his ways. "I had to realize that I couldn't change him," she said. "I would have to build the glass castle myself. It was a hard but necessary thing to understand."

This realization came as her mother and older sister's temporary absences left her in charge of the household - and the family's funds - but Walls found herself unable to refuse her father's requests for alcohol money. "My father had such potential, but he was damaged," she said. "You can love a flawed person, but have to understand that their choices are theirs. You can't live life hoping that they change, and getting on with your own life is not betraying them."

As her father continued to drink away what little money the family made, including the children's own savings, her mother became more and more removed. An artist at heart, Rose Mary Walls shunned her money-making job as a teacher. Her c'est la vie outlook on life left the Walls children with most of the responsibilities of running a household and educating themselves. "As much as you want your parents to be God-like, they are not," Walls said. "They are who they are, and I accept my mother for who she is."

Walls and her three siblings, Laurie, Brian, and Maureen, looked out for each other and ultimately were each other's ticket out of Welch. Each one leaving high school for New York after junior year, if not sooner, the Walls children showed determination to make a life for themselves outside of their parents' shadows.

Laurie, Walls explains, is now an artist, who only read the book "at Mom's urging." Brian, with whom Walls was closest, has retired from being a police officer and now teaches English after putting himself through college. Maureen, the youngest of the children, whom Walls vowed to protect at her birth, has been put back in contact with the family since the book's publication. "She has a standing invitation to come live with me," Walls said.

But although the final outcome of writing the memoir has been positive, Walls had to confront multiple obstacles during the process. "It was a five-year process overall," she said.

Encouraged to tell her story by her husband, John Taylor, Walls wrote the first version in six weeks.

"It was too journalistic," said Walls, a former MSNBC contributor and gossip columnist, a position she left recently to write a second book. "I was also so worried that I would lose all my friends when it came out."

The response, however, has been just the opposite. "I guess I underestimated people," Walls said. "It really changed the way I see people - the world is now a place filled with friends. And everyone has some weirdness in their lives."

Walls' vivid memories, though painful at times, were readily recalled. "Traumatic memories are stored so that they're easily accessed," she said. "It played in my head like a movie. I even remembered some details I didn't put in. It's like how people can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing at the moment when JFK was shot."