Jeannette Walls grew up loving stories about people overcoming obstacles, beating the odds and making something out of their lives.

Among her childhood favorites? “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” and “The Grapes of Wrath.”

It’s not surprising, then, that Walls turned her own hardscrabble youth in Arizona and West Virginia in the 1960s and 1970s into the material for a baldly told narrative about a similar rags-to-riches ascent.

Walls’ memoir, “The Glass Castle,” has won legions of fans since it was published in 2005.

This August, it is the selection of The Buffalo News Book Club for a late-summer read.

Plunge into it and you’ll meet Walls’ one-of-a-kind parents: Rex and Rose Mary Walls, who were married in 1956 and lived a life of tumbleweed-like movement and deep poverty as they raised four children in often chaotic circumstances. (The title refers to a palatial glass house that Walls’ father promised he would someday build for his family.)

Rex Walls, an alcoholic who could be charismatic or cruel, pointing out the stars to his children at one moment and stealing money from them the next, was a complicated figure in their lives. Rose Mary, an artist who offered her children an attitude of optimism but who also hid a Hershey bar in her bed while they were starving for food—was no less complex.

Walls, who lives with her husband, the writer John Taylor, in Culpeper, Va., on a piece of property that is also now home to her 75-year-old widowed mother, joined The Buffalo News for a discussion about her career, the public’s reaction to “The Glass Castle”—and her writing plans.

Next up for her: a “True-Life Novel” (that’s the subtitle) about her grandmother’s life in Texas, called “Half-Broke Horses,” which will be out in October.

Question: A lot of people who read “The Glass Castle” come away from it disgusted — even horrified — by some of the things that Rex and Rose Mary do in the book. But those are your parents! Does it bother you when people dislike them, as characters in the story?

Answer: “Not at all — because it is always said with compassion. When people condemn my mom and dad, it’s just because they’re saying, ‘Those are not my values.’ That was my fondest hope for the book: that people would discuss these issues.

“My mother [in particular] elicits a lot of negative reaction from people. People said, ‘I understand your father: he was an alcoholic. But I don’t understand your mother.’ People say to me, ‘Why would someone with an education, with an upper-middle-class background, choose to do what she did, and live the way she did?’ ”

Q: Do you have any answers for them? How could your mother do those things?

A: “When something goes wrong, my mother tends to pretend it didn’t happen. I’ve inherited that—I tend to do that, too. She just rationalizes things away. It’s one of her survival techniques.

“That was one of the toughest things about writing the book; you not only have to tear down your own survival mechanisms, but other people’s, too.”

Q: How did your mom deal with having those family stories and scenes in print?

A: “It was tough on Mom. [Looking back], I don’t think I gave Mom enough credit for just being there.”

Q: When “The Glass Castle” came out, how did you feel? Did you worry about becoming some sort of poster child for poverty and family oddity?

A: “I genuinely thought people would look down on me and ridicule me. When I read it back I thought, ‘Dang, my life was weird — nobody is going to be able to relate to this.’

“But I underestimated the empathy of people. And I underestimated the number of people out there with their own stories.”

Q: You must hear a ton of that. What do you tell people who want to share their own stories, about their tough (or not so tough) childhoods?

A: “I urge a lot of people who have complicated pasts to write their own memoirs. I think we all put a lot of distance between ourselves and our pasts. When you write it down and read it back, you see it a little bit differently. You see it in a different way, and in a better way. It gives you a very interesting perspective. You see patterns emerge.”

Q: What’s your writing process like?

A: “I am a very fast and tenacious — but sloppy — writer. I start in the morning at around 8 or 9 a. m. and end at around 6 p. m. It’s a long day, but I believe good writing is good rewriting. I probably wrote about 20 versions of ‘The Glass Castle.’

“My advice for writers is to [first] get the whole story down. You don’t know what the story is till you get it down from beginning to end. You can’t include everything. What is the story? Keep on going on it, over and over again.

“And I personally read it out loud in the final version.”

Q: Before “The Glass Castle” came out, you were a journalist reporting on celebrity news for MSNBC and other outlets. You left that job in 2007. Do you miss it? What was celebrity journalism like?

A: “[Leaving] was scary — giving up those paychecks! I had been earning paychecks since I was 13. But I do not miss it at all.

“I was writing about celebrities. And I was not drawn to celebrities; [going into journalism] I was going to write about important sociological stories. I am not going to bash celebrity journalism— I think it gets a bad rap — but really, it’s all about psychology.

“There’s always a reason that [celebrities] are acting that way. If you look deeply enough, there is a story. The more I learned about the Lindsay Lohans, even the Paris Hiltons of the world, I learned: There is a reason they are the way they are.”

Q: Will your next book be another one about your own life?

A: “No. I think I’ve squeezed that sponge enough.”

She laughs. “I don’t think I have anything more to say about me.”

As always, we are interested to hear your thoughts on “The Glass Castle,” as well as any suggestions you may have for future Book Club choices. E-mail the club at: bookclub@buffnews.com. Or write to us at: The Buffalo News Book Club, P. O. Box 100, Buffalo, NY 14240.

The Glass Castle

By Jeannette Walls

Scribner paperback

$15, 288 pages