Editor’s Note: Jeannette Walls is the author of the Half Broke Horses, just published by Scribner. She lives in rural Virginia with her husband, John Taylor.

wOw: Hello, I’m Hilary Black and you’re listening to wOw-Talk Radio. Joining me is Jeannette Walls, the author of the blockbuster memoir The Glass Castle, who is here to discuss her new book: Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel. Jeannette, welcome.

JEANNETTE: Thank you.

wOw: I’m so excited to talk to you about this book because I was one of the earliest and most ardent fans of The Glass Castle, which went on to have an enormous following and spent almost three years on The New York Times bestseller list. Your new book tells the story of your grandmother, Lily Smith, and the arc of her life — and also, the story of your mother, Rose Mary, who features prominently in The Glass Castle. Had you ever considered writing this book as biography? In other words, were you intimidated to write this as fiction?

JEANNETTE: Yes, that’s a great question. I had originally intended to write it about my mother, and she was the one who kept on suggesting that the book should be about her mother. Not because she was reticent to be interviewed, but because she just sort of thought that there was a stronger story there. And at first I resisted, because I couldn’t interview my grandmother; she died when I was eight. And I don’t think of myself as a fiction writer. And there’s no written record of her life, only minimal records. So I didn’t want to write it about Lily. But when I sat down to tell the actual story, I found that, indeed, Mom was right. It was the stronger story. So what I did is I wrote it in first person, in Lily’s voice, but intended to change the book from first person into third person. But when I showed it to my agent and my editor, they said, "Don’t change a thing. Leave it as it is." So we decided that it had to be called fiction. There was enough speculation and filling in the gaps — and just the mere fact that it was written in first person by a woman who’s been dead for more than 40 years, to me made it fiction.

wOw: And I’m sure that it was, if anything, safer to do it this way, given recent scandals surrounding "memoirs" by such writers as James Frey and Margaret Seltzer, which turned out to be a blurring of fact and fiction. And this format must have given you more artistic license.

JEANNETTE: Yes. But, you know, that wasn’t even the consideration. It wasn’t, “Oh, given this climate.” It’s sort of more calling something what it is. Once you start making stuff up, then it’s not nonfiction anymore. You know, it’s interesting because, like I said, I don’t think of myself as a fiction writer — but I’ve only recently come to understand how close the two very often are. The sort of fiction that I enjoy reading is very close to nonfiction; and the sort of nonfiction that I enjoy reading, reads like fiction. You know, we take what we know and we write about it. So we ended up calling the book a “true life novel” because it was as close as I could get to the truth. But, at the same time, I just can’t say, “Oh, this all happened,” because I don’t know. I wasn’t there; I can’t verify it.