num_pages: 272
description: Jeannette Walls's memoir The Glass Castle was nothing short of spectacular (Entertainment Weekly). Now in Half Broke Horses she brings us the story of her grandmother told in a first-person voice that is authentic irresistible and triumphant. 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.
language: English
title: Half Broke Horses
publisher: Scribner