The Silver Star - Hardcover

"Walls writes with the paired-down incisiveness of a memoirist looking for the significance of every incident, but it's the way she draws Bean, so strong even in the face of all the additional challenges that come with her age, gender, and innocence, that will make this book a hit with readers."--Nicholas Mancusi "The Daily Beast "

"At heart Walls is a wonderful yarn-spinner...This is a page-turner, built for hammock or beach reading."--Karen Valby "Entertainment Weekly "

"Great writing...An absorbing, unsentimental tale of childhood."--Chelsea Cain "The New York Times Book Review "

"Jeannette Walls transports us with her powerful storytelling...Using Bean's expertly crafted, naively stubborn voice, Walls contemplates the extraordinary bravery needed to confront real-life demons in a world where the hardest thing to do may be to not run away."--Abbe Wright "O, the Oprah magazine "

"Walls' writing is lively and her dialogue crips, and the girls' struggles with their mother ring true."--Margaret Quamme "The Columbus Dispatch "

"Walls writes with equal tenderness for her most beloved characters and the least among them. It takes a compassionate soul to find the beauty in despair and that's what Walls does best."--Amy MacKinnon "The Patriot Ledger "

Walls has written yet another gripping story of a courageous and sensible girl surviving the adults around her."--Holly Silva "St. Louis Post-Dispatch "

"Walls is adept at steeping her characters in some intense, old-fashioned drama...The Silver Star is a lovely, moving novel with an appealing narrator in Bean."--Carmela Ciuraru "USA Today "

"A polished work of fiction...Engaging...Fans will find echoes of her coruscating family chronicle that first struck a chord with readers in 2005, but The Silver Star is the novel of a more confident, mature and calculating writer...[an] atmospheric bildungsroman of adolescent passage, changing times and bent but unbroken family bonds."--Jane Sumner "Dallas Morning News "

"A great spirit comes through The Silver Star...Jeannette Walls knows how to make characters pop off the page (and tear your heart out in the process.)"--Angela Mattano "Campus Circle Magazine "

The Silver Star, Jeannette Walls has written a heartbreaking and redemptive novel about an intrepid girl who challenges the injustice of the adult world—a triumph of imagination and storytelling.

It is 1970 in a small town in California. “Bean” Holladay is twelve and her sister, Liz, is fifteen when their artistic mother, Charlotte, a woman who “found something wrong with every place she ever lived,” takes off to find herself, leaving her girls enough money to last a month or two. When Bean returns from school one day and sees a police car outside the house, she and Liz decide to take the bus to Virginia, where their Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying mansion that’s been in Charlotte’s family for generations.

An impetuous optimist, Bean soon discovers who her father was, and hears many stories about why their mother left Virginia in the first place. Because money is tight, Liz and Bean start babysitting and doing office work for Jerry Maddox, foreman of the mill in town—a big man who bullies his workers, his tenants, his children, and his wife. Bean adores her whip-smart older sister—inventor of word games, reader of Edgar Allan Poe, nonconformist. But when school starts in the fall, it’s Bean who easily adjusts and makes friends, and Liz who becomes increasingly withdrawn. And then something happens to Liz.

Jeannette Walls, supremely alert to abuse of adult power, has written a deeply moving novel about triumph over adversity and about people who find a way to love each other and the world, despite its flaws and injustices.