Jeannette paints a good picture of her down and out childhood. I found this book to be an easy read. However, I also think that she makes her parents not to be bad people when in fact they were very selfish people. Who cares how smart they were. I think maybe her parents were more than a little on the crazy side then just plain old non ambitious people. What got to me was the love the kids had for their parent, even though these kids were abused. The author did a great job on how the story ended.