Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

Several months ago, I read a book called Glass Castle...you can read my review here. This is the follow up book. In Glass Castle, Jeannette wrote a memoir of her life and what growing up was like in her family. Half Broke Horses is a true-life novel about her maternal grandmother Lily Casey Smith. The reason this is a novel is because Lily passed away when Jeannette was 8 years old. So, she didn't have her to help with the book. She wrote the book with memories that her mom had shared as she was growing up and with other pieces of family history that she had found.

I like this book a lot better than Glass Castle. It is written as if Lily is telling you the stories. Each story feels like I was sitting out on Lily's front porch hearing her tell them to me directly. I was amazing at how strong of a person Lily was and the life she lived ranching with her father, when she was a child, and with her husband when she married.

I have full respect for the women of this time. Their roles were so complex, I don't know how they remembered who they were. But Lily was strong and no matter what she did to keep her family going, she did it with her head held high.

"Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, Jeannette Walls's no nonsense, resourceful, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town -- riding five hundred miles on her pony, alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car ("I loved cars even more than I loved horses. They didn't need to be fed if they weren't working, and they didn't leave big piles of manure all over the place") and fly a plane. And, with her husband Jim, she ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom is Jeannette's memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls, unforgettably portrayed in The Glass Castle.

Lily survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy. She bristled at prejudice of all kinds -- against women, Native Americans, and anyone else who didn't fit the mold. Rosemary Smith Walls always told Jeannette that she was like her grandmother, and in this true-life novel, Jeannette Walls channels that kindred spirit. Half Broke Horses is Laura Ingalls Wilder for adults, as riveting and dramatic as Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa or Beryl Markham's West with the Night. Destined to become a classic, it will transfix audiences everywhere.