Review Thursday: Half Broke Horses

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls (2009)

Jeannette Walls, whose searing autobiography Glass Castles detailed her chaotic and tumultuous childhood, has written what she describes as ‘a true life novel’ about her grandmother Lily Casey Smith. Drawing on family members’ stories, memories, photographs, and documents, Walls recreates a woman with boundless energy, tremendous resilience, insatiable curiosity, and an unshakeable moral core.

Lily narrates her own story and, stunning as some of the events are, her commonsense approach is a match for all of them. At fifteen she left her family and their hardscrabble homestead in west Texas and traveled alone on horseback over 500 miles to teach school in a small Arizona town. Lily’s life was one unconventional adventure after another as she lived through the Great Depression, suffered a disastrous first marriage, endured her sister’s suicide, married a man more than 20 years her senior, faced foreclosure on their house and business, raised a family while helping to run a 100,000 acre ranch, turned a used hearse into a school bus, and learned to fly a plane. To help make ends meet, she also sold liquor from her back door during Prohibition, hiding the hooch under her baby son’s crib when the cops came to call!

Lily’s strong opinions and feisty manner landed her in trouble and often resulted in conflicts with those in authority. She advocated for those she felt hadn’t gotten a fair deal whether it was her female co-workers during World War II or the indigenous Havasupai Indians near the ranch. People either loved her or hated her but they always knew where they stood with her. For all her pragmatism, Lily was also a seeker, continually searching for what her father called her Purpose. That drive informed her life and enriched those who knew her.

Walls has painted a vivid portrait of a strong, indomitable yet fallible woman. Half Broke Horses will appeal to readers who enjoy biographies like Angela’s Ashes and West with the Night, novels like O Pioneers and The Stone Diaries, and authors like Fannie Flagg and Adriana Trigiani.