STUDIO CITY (CBS) — Actress Mary McDonough stopped by KCAL9 Thursday to talk about her new book, “Lessons From the Mountain: What I Learned From Erin Walton.”

The book is award-winning actress, writer, director Mary McDonough’s poignant memoir of growing up on Emmy award-winning series The Waltons.

At the age of ten, McDonough was cast as Erin Walton in “The Homecoming,” the movie of the week that inspired the Emmy award-winning dramatic series and overnight, her life as a normal kid in a working-class family changed. She left school, friends and the McDonough family to start a new life of studio classrooms, wardrobe fittings, travel, interviews, photo sessions, and memorizing lines. As McDonough says, “It was bizarre, fun, tremendous, painful, wonderful and different. It was definitely not a normal way to grow up.”

When asked about being the first of the Walton’s cast to release a memoir, Mary declares, “The decision to write didn’t come easily for several reasons. When people ask me why we haven’t written a book about The Waltons, I joke that if anyone did and told the whole truth, the rest of us would get together and kill them. So, if I disappear soon after this book is published, consider The Waltons family members key suspects.”

For more information, visit Mary McDonough’s website.