The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannettes brilliant and charasmatic father captured his childrens imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didnt want the responsibility of raising a family.