The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

When you read this book about Jeannette Walls and her crazy family, you wonder -- is this really true? Her parents were vagabonds and dreamers who certainly would not know the meaning of the words helicopter parent. They drag their four children through a careless, almost abusive childhood. The kids have to fend for themselves to find food. They rarely have baths or clean clothes. And yet there is something occasionally magical that happens such as when Jeanette's dad takes her out on the stoop of their house on Christmas Eve to give her any star she wants and name it after her as a present or when she goes to Barnard on her own and he and her mother are homeless in NYC - he wins $1000 at poker and gives it to her to pay the last $1000 she owes for college.