A charmed life. That is what strangers thought when they looked at little Karen, a beautiful child from a loving family, growing up without a care in the world. They did not see the pressure to be perfect. The instability of a family dealing with alcoholism and the euphemistically termed "melancholy." The risks a growing child, a young lady, would take to feel that she was something more. The raw honesty of The Glass Castle meets the glamour of 1950s Hollywood in Karen's journey to break free of PRETTY.