Jeannette Walls (2024)

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What was Maureen Walls diagnosed with? ›

Her younger sister, Maureen, stabbed Rose Mary in the back 20 years ago, before being given a diagnosis of schizophrenia; she now lives in California and claims she has no mother. Lori remains close to Rose Mary, Walls said, though she lives in Manhattan, where she works at a law firm to support herself as an artist.

Walls has contributed to USA Today, and has appeared on The Today Show, CNN, Primetime, and The Colbert Report. Her 2000 book, Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip, was a humorous history of the role gossip has played in U.S. media, politics and life.

These days, when Ms. Walls is not at her desk, she is focused on her land. She and her husband have been working with a biologist to encourage the return of native grasses, wildflowers and trees.

Jeannette Walls's mother is still alive by the end of the memoir in 1999. Her father dies five years earlier of a heart attack and changes Jeannette's perspective of her life. She realizes that her husband is not the right one for her and that she does not belong on the Upper East Side in their Park Avenue apartment.

Walls' father, Rex, was a charming, intelligent alcoholic who was also likely suffering from an undiagnosed bipolar disorder; her mother Mary Rose is a self-described “excitement addict” who often neglected her children to focus on her painting.

In the Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls writes about her early childhood struggles, which included some of her mom's crazy episodes. Jeannette knows that her mom has some degree of mental illness that had caused her emotional breakdowns, bipolar behavior, compulsive lying, and lack of responsibility.