The second half of the book is about Jeannettes life in the small town of Welch, this is where she really starts to learn allot of life lessons, learning how to truly fend for herself. She also gets to know herself as person and a writer, She becomes very involved in her school news paper. Later on she decides to leave to go to New York where she starts schooling at the college. She works lots of jobs there and then

Basically the book starts in New York where Jeannette Walls, our protagonist see's her mom digging through a dumpster and then invites her to lunch a couple days later. After that happened she starts to tell us about her childhood growing up and how they were always on the go, going from one town to the next. She also tells us about other events like when she was three she was badly burned and how she got into all sorts of different situations.