Half Broke Horses

June 1, 2009
For the first 10 years of her life, Lily Casey Smith, the narrator of this “true-life novel” by her granddaughter, Walls, lived in a dirt dugout in west Texas. Walls, whose megaselling memoir, The Glass Castle
, recalled her own upbringing, writes in what she recalls as Lily’s plainspoken voice, whose recital provides plenty of drama and suspense as she ricochets from one challenge to another. Having been educated in fits and starts because of her parents’ penury, Lily becomes a teacher at age 15 in a remote frontier town she reaches after a solo 28-day ride. Marriage to a bigamist almost saps her spirit, but later she weds a rancher with whom she shares two children and a strain of plucky resilience. (They sell bootleg liquor during Prohibition, hiding the bottles under a baby’s crib.) Lily is a spirited heroine, fiercely outspoken against hypocrisy and prejudice, a rodeo rider and fearless breaker of horses, and a ruthless poker player. Assailed by flash floods, tornados and droughts, Lily never gets far from hardscrabble drudgery in several states—New Mexico, Arizona, Illinois—but hers is one of those heartwarming stories about indomitable women that will always find an audience.

Following up her previous book, the hugely successful memoir THE GLASS CASTLE, Jeannette Walls is back with another family saga, this time a novel that features her grandmother Lily. Walls delivers a compelling, plainspoken performance that conveys every emotion of the novel. It's easy to imagine the family stories being told and retold, polished and shaped, as Lily gave them their own cadence, clearly defined emphasis, and tempo. The story starts off with a bang as Lily rescues herself and her siblings from a flash flood in Texas and goes on to recount her fierce determination to get an education and become a teacher, along the way facing down tornadoes, drought, and the Great Depression, Walls brings her grandmother's indomitable character vividly to life. D.G. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine