Jeannette Walls, June 27
After being abandoned, the two sisters make their way across country to Charlotte's hometown in Byler, Virgina, in search of an uncle they barely know. Their arrival is as much of a shock to widowed Uncle Tinsley as it is to the girls themselves as they try to adjust to life in the small southern town. Money is tight, so Liz and Bean decide to take jobs doing office work for Jerry Maddox -- the town mill's foreman and bully - with devastating results. Walls' memoir "The Glass Castle" has been a New York Times bestseller for more than five years. Her second book, "Half-Broke Horses," told the fictionalized biography of her grandmother. Walls was born in Phoenix, then grew up in the Southwest and Welch, West Virginia; she now lives in rural Virginia.