Growing up in a family far from the traditional idea of upbringing, Jeannette Walls, like no one else, knows what it’s like to live in a world where you have to suffer from the eccentricity, imbalance of your own parents. Twelve-year-old Bean Holliday and her fifteen-year-old sister Liz find themselves in a difficult situation. situation: their frivolous mother, trying to make a career as a singer, reaches a nervous breakdown and leaves for an indefinite period. To avoid ending up in a shelter, the girls go to their only relative in Virginia. They begin to get used to their new, relatively calm life, but, alas, they face another test, perhaps more terrible than all the previous ones.