Imagine that you are sitting in a taxi in New York City, headed to a party, wondering if you are overdressed for the occasion. You look out the window and see your mother rooting through a dumpster. Her hair is tangled and matted, her skin is ruddy and parched from being exposed to the elements and she looks like any other homeless person in the city. What do you do?

When this happened to Jeannette Walls, author of “The Glass Castle,” she slid down in her seat and asked the taxi driver to turn around. She went back to her Park Avenue home. This is the true story of Jeannette's childhood, filled with poverty, alcoholism and homelessness. Her father, brilliant when sober, and dangerous when intoxicated, promised to build Jeannette and her siblings a glass castle. Her mother, a thrill-seeker with depression issues, struggled as a mother and as an elementary school teacher. The family was intentionally homeless, moving around the country throughout Jeannette's young life.

Despite her troubled childhood, Jeannette managed to graduate from Barnard College, sell two million copies of her memoir and write for New York Magazine, Esquire, USA Today and MSNBC.

Cayuga Reads, the community reading project that encourages everyone to read the same book at the same time, is sponsoring a series of events in October. The Cayuga Reads selection for this fall is “The Glass Castle.”

This book is also being made into a movie. Multiple copies of the book are available at Seymour Library and other libraries in Cayuga County.

Sponsors of Cayuga Reads are the Auburn Enlarged City School District, Cayuga Community College, Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES and Seymour Library.

The program is supported, in part, by a grant from the New York Newspaper Foundation.

Multiple book discussions have been scheduled at a variety of locations and times to give as many community members as possible a chance to attend. Other events are also planned. The schedule is:

• Book discussion, 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 3, at the Aurora Free Library

• Panel discussion of mental illness and screening of the film “Out of the Shadow,” 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 9, at Cayuga Community College in Auburn; Guy Cosentino, executive director of the Stardust Foundation of Central New York, will moderate a panel that includes local mental health professionals

• Book discussion, 11 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 15, at the Cayuga Community College Fulton campus

• Book discussion, 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 15, and noon Thursday, Oct. 16, at the Seymour Library in Auburn

• Book discussion, 10 a.m. Friday, Oct. 17, and 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 21, at the Cayuga Community College Auburn campus

• Reception for writing contest winners, 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 29, at the Seymour Library in Auburn

Sheila Mikkelson is the director of the Seymour Library in Auburn.