Journalist Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary and their four children lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing...

Traces the author's journey of recovery after a childhood marked by her mentally ill father, a respected suburban doctor with an obsessive need for control that caused him to torture his wife and children about the most minute details of their lives.