Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel
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- ISBN13: 9780743597227
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Jeannette Walls’s memoir The Glass Castle was “nothing fleeting of spectacular” (Entertainment Weekly). Now, in Half Broke Horses, she brings us the tale of her grandmother, told in a first-person voice that is authentic, irresistible, and triumphant.
“Persons ancient cows knew distress was coming before we did.” So starts the tale 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 effective, and they didn’t place huge piles of manure all over the place”) and glide a plane. And, with her spouse Jim, she ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom is Jeannette’s memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls, unforgettably described in The Glass Castle.
Lily survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Fantastic 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 permanently told Jeannette that she was like her grandmother, and in this right-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.
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No mistake… this is a novel and *not* a recounting of real life adventures. The folksy expressions that Ms. Walls uses may entertain some people, but I’m not overly impressed. I grew up in Arizona and I establish these ‘tall tales’ to be to some extent unbelievable…even though they were supposed to have happened around the 1930’s. She undoubtedly blown up upon tales she heard as a child that probably had all ready be exaggerated. As a novel, this was at times an amusing read, but fell fleeting of entertaining.
The characters are unique, but not all together likeable. I thought the tale rambled aimlessly lacking much of a message: Disfunctional families produce disfunctional families.
Perhaps this is better period fiction than some tales, but I’ll pass on her next novel.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
The title says it all. I have sent an email 4 days ago and am still waiting for a answer.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I have not finished this book yet, but already like it as much as Glass Castle.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Journalist Jeannette Walls detailed her own hard and regularly incredible past in her memoir, The Glass Castle. Now, she focuses upon her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith — born in the early 20th century in the rural West, with so much danger and desolation in her everyday life, it wasn’t much different than it had been a century earlier.
From a young age, Lily — the eldest of three children — is headstrong and independent. It’s up to her to make decisions that will help run the family tree ranch, that will keep her intelligent but handicapped father, not so bright brother and incredibly passive mother and sister alive and thriving on a day to day basis.
During World War I, teenaged Lily seizes an opportunity granted by the shortage of schoolteachers, setting off hundreds of miles into Arizona on horseback to teach in a one-room schoolhouse. Despite never finishing eighth grade herself, Lily was able to teach many children, both in school subjects and the ways of the world.
After marrying Jim Smith, Lily, her spouse and later their two children — Small Jim and Walls’ mother Rosemary — would work as ranch managers of one of the most successful and largest spreads in the area. Together they battled drought, natural disaster and illness, until life finally sent them to Phoenix after World War II.
In this book, Walls also shares some anecdotes and insight about her mother Rosemary, who — if readers have read Walls’ memoir — is regularly described as irrational and downright neglectful of her children (and self, at times). Rosemary, also indicated as headstrong and independent, is described as a largely ordinary child and teenager throughout much of the book. But, by the time she meets and marries Rex Walls, it’s simple to see where things might lead, knowing what we do of their future.
Not only is Lily Casey Smith a fascinating read all in herself, but this memoir also provides a fascinating glimpse into Southwestern life during the early and mid-twentieth century, especially in the areas of ranching and education.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
While feeling sympathy for the odd upbringing of this writer, I do not feel the tale deserves to be in print. Having read the book take in to take in I felt I had learned exactly nothing of value.
It is one thing to embrace one’s past, reasonably another to thrash around in its least positive aspects.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5