Being a single mother is never easy, but for Charlotte Holladay, a wannabe folk singer in 1970, raising her 15- and 12-year-old daughters, Liz and Jean (aka “Bean”), is more than she can handle. Known for dropping out when things get tough, Charlotte’s latest spell of parental abandonment attracts police attention and the girls flee California rather than face being placed in foster care. A cross-country bus trip lands them on the doorstep of their only relative, the previously unmet Uncle Tinsley, and their arrival proves to be as much of a shock for the reclusive widower as it is for the girls themselves. As the trio learns to coexist, Liz and Bean try to fit into the small southern town. With money tight, they land jobs with mill foreman Jerry Maddox, an overbearing brute who runs roughshod over the town’s residents and takes advantage of Liz’s trusting nature, with devastating results. Readers familiar with Walls’ backstory from her luminous memoir, The Glass Castle (2005), will recognize elements of her personal history in this captivating, read-in-one-sitting, coming-of-age adventure. --Carol Haggas
Walls has written yet another gripping story of a courageous and sensible girl surviving the adults around her.” (Holly Silva
St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
“Walls writes with the paired-down incisiveness of a memoirist looking for the significance of every incident, but it’s the way she draws Bean, so strong even in the face of all the additional challenges that come with her age, gender, and innocence, that will make this book a hit with readers.” (Nicholas Mancusi
The Daily Beast)
“At heart Walls is a wonderful yarn-spinner…This is a page-turner, built for hammock or beach reading.” (Karen Valby
Entertainment Weekly)
“Walls is adept at steeping her characters in some intense, old-fashioned drama…
The Silver Star is a lovely, moving novel with an appealing narrator in Bean.” (Carmela Ciuraru
USA Today)
“Walls writes with easy assurance about Liz and Bean, proving in fiction as she did in her memoir,
The Glass Castle, that she knows children’s hearts—as well as the evil that can lurk in the hearts of grown-ups.” (
Parade)
“A polished work of fiction…Engaging…Fans will find echoes of her coruscating family chronicle that first struck a chord with readers in 2005, but
The Silver Star is the novel of a more confident, mature and calculating writer…[an] atmospheric bildungsroman of adolescent passage, changing times and bent but unbroken family bonds.” (Jane Sumner
Dallas Morning News)
“Great writing…An absorbing, unsentimental tale of childhood.” (Chelsea Cain
The New York Times Book Review)
“A great spirit comes through
The Silver Star…Jeannette Walls knows how to make characters pop off the page (and tear your heart out in the process.)” (Angela Mattano
Campus Circle Magazine)
“With immense charm and warmth, Walls, the author of
The Glass Castle, has created a lively account of kids finding a way to thrive in the absence of reliable parents.” (
Real Simple)
“Jeannette Walls transports us with her powerful storytelling…Using Bean’s expertly crafted, naively stubborn voice, Walls contemplates the extraordinary bravery needed to confront real-life demons in a world where the hardest thing to do may be to not run away.” (Abbe Wright
O, the Oprah magazine)
“Jeannette Walls is a master at her craft. In the same way she spoke candidly of her own parents’ shortcomings in
The Glass Castle, in
The Silver Star she lends this candid voice to Bean, and captures the inner workings of an adolescent’s mind perfectly….
The Silver Star stands strong as its own story, wholly unique and wholly captivating.” (Kristin Fritz
EverdayEbook.com)
“Walls’ writing is lively and her dialogue crips, and the girls’ struggles with their mother ring true.” (Margaret Quamme
The Columbus Dispatch)
“[
The Silver Star is] an examination of bad parenting and resilient children in a rich and complex setting. Bean is a compelling character, and it is fascinating to watch her ideas about both her mother and her sister change as the book progresses.” (Sarah Rachel Egelman
Bookreporter.com)
“Walls writes with equal tenderness for her most beloved characters and the least among them. It takes a compassionate soul to find the beauty in despair and that’s what Walls does best.” (Amy MacKinnon
The Patriot Ledger)
“Jeannette Walls jumps off the memoir train and hitches a ride on the novel form with
The Silver Star.” (Elissa Schappell
Vanity Fair)
“[A] captivating, read-in-one-sitting, coming-of-age adventure.” (
Booklist)
“When Bean reads
To Kill a Mockingbird in school, she seems like a long-lost cousin to Scout…She makes for a strong and spunky protagonist.” (
Publishers Weekly)
“Walls turns what could have been another sentimental girl-on-the-run-finds-home cliché into a fresh consideration of both adolescence and the South on the cusp of major social change.” (
Kirkus Reviews (starred review))
“By turns witty, warm and provocative, this all ages read by the author of
The Glass Castle is a perfect choice for your high school mother-daughter book club or to throw in your beach bag this summer.” (
ReadingRants.org)