Before the family even crosses the New Mexico border, the Oldsmobile breaks down. Dad fixes it, but from that point on the car can’t drive faster than 20 miles per hour. It takes the family a month to reach Welch, West Virginia, a coal-mining town nestled deep in the heart of Appalachia. When Jeannette meets Dad’s obese mother, Erma, his thin father, Ted, and his toothless Uncle Stanley, she initially believes it is a prank—that Dad arranged for “the weirdest people in town to pretend they were his family” (131). Mom, Dad, and the four kids move into Erma’s basement.

As she recalls her initial tour of Welch, the author points out that the town was so poor, President John F. Kennedy once toured it to illustrate to the rest of the country that starvation-level poverty still exists in America. When the kids ask if they can swim in the Tug River, Dad says that it has “the highest level of fecal bacteria of any river in North America” (133). Ludicrously, Mom concludes that with no competition her art career is poised to take off in Welch.