Half Broke Horses

My grandparents all have interesting stories, from my maternal grandmother who grew up in West Virginia and told about how they brushed their teeth with salt instead of toothpaste and washed their hair in kerosene when they got lice, to my paternal grandfather who left Spain at age thirteen when the Spanish Civil War was heating up and swears he met Ernest Hemingway while waiting to board the ship to the States. Last year I discovered that my paternal grandmother's family have lived in the North Carolina mountains for three hundred years; there have to be some interesting stories there.

For years I've considered putting together these stories, either with the help of my dad and my sister or on my own, but I was always discouraged from show more proceeding with any of these in part because I felt bad picking one grandparent's story over another's, but more because it's never been clear to me which stories are factual and which are embellished to the point that they're more accurately described as fiction. And then there would be the difficulty of piecing together all of the disparate tales so the story read as a single work rather than a cobbling together of recollections.

In Half Broke Horses, Jeannette Walls surmounts all of these obstacles to create an interesting, readable story written in the voice of her inimitable grandmother. Lily Casey Smith was clearly a rough-around-the-edges woman, but I found her mostly likable and enjoyed reading her story. Aside from the interest I took in Walls' decision to couch her story as fiction and how that freed her as a storyteller, my favorite part about this book was the description of the setting. Lily Casey Smith doesn't romanticize the Southwest, but she clearly loves it and is a part of it. Seeing Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas through her eyes made my heart yearn for sparsely populated open spaces (if not for scorpions and lack of water). I was daydreaming about a western road trip before I started reading, and now that I'm done with the book, I really want to hit the road (watching the movie Crazy Heart this weekend also contributed---how I miss those wide, open skies!).

The only trouble I had with this book was that the stories sometimes didn't flow one into the next as smoothly as they might have, and especially towards the end, the narrative seemed to speed up and lack the lush detail it had earlier in the book. In a way, this reflects the way that time speeds up as our children get older, that uncanny way time has of rushing by each time we blink, but I still felt a little disappointed. I wanted more from that last third than what was there. At least I can follow it up with The Glass Castle. show less

I remember reading years back Jeannette Walls' first book, her memoir, GLASS CASTLE, and enjoying it greatly. It was a huge bestseller, and, I think, a movie too. HALF BROKE HORSES is neither a memoir nor a biography. Instead it's a novel based on the life of her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, born at the turn of the last century, who grew up wild on western ranches in Texas and Arizona, where her father, half crippled, and with a speech impediment, carved a life out of training carriage horses. Lily loved horses, but she also loved learning, and got a teaching certificate at a young age and taught in tiny one-room schools, often clashing with administrators and moving on. Her story continues through the Great Depression and prohibition show more years. After one ill-fated early marriage (he was already married, with kids) in Chicago, in Arizona she marries a man twenty years older, has a couple of kids, goes back to college, helps her husband run a business, then a ranch, sells a little hooch on the side to make ends meet (and carries a gun), teaches some more, learns to drive - and to fly - moves to the city, then back to the country. Sends her kids off to boarding school. Watches her kids grow up and marry. I mean this is a woman's whole LIFE, and there's a LOT going on here. Remember I said I loved Walls' first book? Well ditto this one. Jeannette Walls is one helluva story teller. My highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less

The book begins with a flood. Literally, on the first page a flash flood threatens the lives of three young children in Texas. From that second on the book completely hooked me. This addictive read is a “real life novel” from the author of The Glass Castle (which I loved). Her first book chronicled her own unconventional childhood. This book tells her grandma Lily’s story.

It’s a “novel” because she allows Lily’s voice to tell the story and doesn’t question the amazing stories that have been passed down orally in her family. The style is perfect and I think it would have felt stilted and forced if written in any other way. Lily is a spitfire and led one hell of a life. It’s rare for me to feel so completely sucked in show more to a nonfiction book. I had a hard time putting it down, because there was no end to the trials Lily faced. Her life reads like a movie.

Whenever she decided she wanted something, she just rolled up her sleeves and made it happen. She didn’t shy away from hard work, but she also never became complacent in her life and settled for what she had. Her strong personality was off-putting to many people in her life, but that never stopped her. She stood her ground regardless of public opinion. She was determined, brave and a fierce advocate for her children.

“I realized that you can get so used to certain luxuries that you start to think they’re necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don’t need them after all.”

If you’ve already read The Glass Castle (definitely not a necessary thing to do before reading this) you’ll be interested to learn more about the author’s mother Rosemary. This book explains her upbringing, which sheds a lot of light on why she turned out like she did. It’s not a perfect book, but I loved it. So whether you’re interested in learning more about their family or just want a great story, read this!

The book is packed with too many great one-liners to mention, but here are a few of my favorites…

"The only difference between a traitor and a patriot is your perspective."

“If you want to be reminded of the love of the Lord, Mom always said, just watch the sunrise. And if you want to be reminded of the wrath of the Lord, Dad said, watch a tornado.”

“Some times after I finished a particularly good book, I had the urge to get the library card, find out who else had read the book, and track them down to talk about it.” show less

What a wonderful life! Lily Casey grew up in the Southwest during the early 1900s. She was raised on various hard-scrabble homesteads and being a fast learner, she quickly grasped ranching, breaking horses and basic farming. Her natural smarts and love of books, led her to a teaching career, which included locking horns with the creepy head of a Polygamist sect. She also raced horses, played a mean hand of poker, dabbled in bootlegging, flew airplanes and drove a western taxi, which was a converted hearse. This is called a true-life novel and the author Jeanette Walls, who penned the acclaimed memoir The Glass Castle, based this story on her maternal grandmother. It’s crisply and vividly written. This brief dialogue captures Lily’s show more grit. She is taking a couple New York ladies to the Grand Canyon, in the “taxi”, when Lily rolls the car. No one is hurt but the ladies are understandably upset:
“Youse almost got us kilt!”
And Lily’s reply- “All that’s happened to you is that you’ve had the lace knocked off your panties. Instead of carrying on, you should be thanking me, because my driving skills just saved all your necks. You ride, you got to know how to fall, and you drive, you got to know how to crash.” show less

This was a Christmas present, and I knew Walls' name from several friends having recommended The Glass Castle (though I still haven't gotten around to reading that one yet).

Walls' grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, was more of a character than any writer could make up. (Details, though, did have to be fabricated out of necessity; thus the fiction and non-fiction shelf labels.) The book has a strong, distinctive voice: Smith was tough as nails, unsentimental, and opinionated. Walls does a nice job communicating Smith's flaws, especially in parenting, without having the character come out and admit to being wrong.

But Smith's flaws aren't nearly as important to the story as her gumption and the gumption of her family members. It's that show more wild-headed acumen of hers - and the situations it gets her into and out of - that makes this an irresistible read. show less

I remember reading Jeannette Walls memoir, The Glass Castle, teary-eyed at the life she and her siblings led at the hands of her alcoholic father and totally useless mother, fending for themselves because the parents who could provide for them chose not to. Walls new book, Half-Broke Horses, described as a true-life novel, tells the story of Walls’ grandmother, a gritty, tenacious, unsentimental, harsh woman. There were no tears here just many thoughts of “Who would do that?” or “Who would let their child do that?”

We meet Lily Casey when she is ten years old and she and her brother and sister climb a tree to escape the suddenly raging flood waters, and hang on up there through the night until they are able to climb down and show more return home where their parents’ prayers have been answered by their safe return. Her mother tries to take the credit for their survival because she prayed all night but Lily will have none of it:

“The way I saw it, I was the one who’d saved us all, not Mom and not some guardian angel. No one was up in that cottonwood tree except the three of us. I started explaining how I’d gotten us to the cottonwood tree in time, figuring out how to switch places when our arms got tired and keeping Buster and Helen awake through the long night by quizzing them.”

And so begins the tale of Lily Casey’s life, filled with one dramatic rescue after another; one daring escapade only to be topped by the next one; a continual line of spineless characters, put in their place by the overbearing Lily. You soon begin to realize that, in her opinion, she’s good at anything and everything she tries. And try she does, because living in the southwest desert of the United States in the 1930’s and 40’s was a true pioneer experience. This is the West when the West was still rough: we follow Lily as she is allowed by her parents to take on responsibilities usually reserved for adults such as, breaking horses, bartering with a store owner over the price of eggs, gelding horses (yikes!), and other incidents that prepare her for what turns out to be her initiation into adulthood at the age of 15: she is hired as an itinerant teacher for a school 500 miles away and the only way to get there is on her horse. It takes four weeks, which Lily takes in stride since Dad supplies her with a pearl-handled six shooter.

From there the book goes on to explore Lily’s life as a young teacher, her brief time in Chicago, her marriage to Jim Smith and the birth of her children and her experiences as a mother. Towards the end of the book, her daughter Rosemary is highlighted as is the man she marries, Rex Walls. The author lets us know that Lily predicted the life that Rosemary ended up living which was brought to life in Jeannette Walls’ memoir. Through it all, Lily’s tenacity and strong-willed spirit shines through and although I really didn’t like this character much, I had to admire her grit, perseverance and fortitude. The author is just such a great storyteller that it is easy to ignore Lily’s less desirable characteristics and just be carried along by the narrative. Along the way you meet many, many other eccentric, quirky characters. Highly recommended. show less

In this "true life novel", Jeannette Walls reconstructs the life of her maternal grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, in the form of a first person narrative. Lily, born in 1900, is a pistol. Carries one, too.

Lily is a tough-as-nails gal with a lust for life. She endures numerous setbacks but bounces back from each one with a resilience that ought to give pause to our current generation of crybabies. Yeah, the current economic climate is tough, but the Lily's generation has it a lot tougher. Rancher, pilot, and schoolmarm, she takes on life with an admirable authority.

Walls clearly admires her subject, but manages to poke some straight-faced fun at her as well. For example, Lily's tendency to invite strangers into her house to show off her show more new indoor plumbing. Or her sense of pride in her new set of dentures that compels her to pull them out of her mouth and show them to people. show less