Lionsgate, the studio behind The Hunger Games, is inching closer to signing Jennifer Lawrence to the big-screen adaptation of Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle.

Walls’ best-selling 2005 memoir details a childhood of harrowing neglect as her family, led by an alcoholic father and a painter mother, wander from town to town, ekeing out an arduous experience amid financial difficulties and near-miss medical injuries, like the scalding the author experienced as a three-year-old while cooking hot dogs. Later, when Walls and her three siblings each settle in New York, their parents attempt to join them, only to become squatters in the Village.

Marti Noxon has previously submitted a draft of the script, and Short Term 12 director Destin Cretton was last attached to the project.

[via Variety]