Lessons From A Hard-Knock Life

By Amber Nimocks,

Published February 10, 2011 at 10:34 AM EST

Jeannette Walls' parents didn't seem to worry about her and her three siblings much. Not when Jeannette set herself on fire cooking a hot dog when she was a preschooler, not when the family had to repeatedly flee home after home with creditors at their heels, not when she rummaged through the school garbage to find her lunch. But in her best-selling memoir, "The Glass Castle" (Scribner/2005), Walls offers gratitude for the lessons she learned growing up and for her parents' gifts of love. The author joins host Frank Stasio to talk about her memories of a hard-knock childhood.

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Amber Nimocks

Amber Nimocks came to The State of Things in January 2009. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a survivor of 15 years in the newspaper business. As a reporter and editor, her posts have included such exotic locales as her hometown of Fayetteville, Robeson County, Wilmington, Raleigh and Fort Worth, Texas.

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Frank Stasio

Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.

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