The story starts with a flash flood during which Lily encourages her siblings to climb a cottonwood tree and hold on for hours until the flood recedes. They live in a dugout which her mother (of refined nature) tries to make it as gentile as possible with an Oriental rug, chaise lounge, lace doilies and velvet curtains, but scorpions, lizards, snakes and gophers also inhabited the space and sometimes during a rain storm, a goat would stick a hoof through the mud roof. Unlike her mother and sister Helen, Lily is far from gentile and learns how to fall and roll from a bucking horse, and helps her father on their spread. But it's not only the story that is enticing, but Jeanette Walls style of writing that keeps the reader hooked until the very end.
