Half Broke Horses

Entertainment Weekly described Jeannette Walls's book, The Glass Castle, as "nothing short of spectacular". Now, in Half Broke Horses, she shares with us her grandmother's tale in a genuine, captivating, and victorious first-person narrative.

"Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." This is how the tale of Jeannette Walls's tough, resourceful, and very captivating grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, starts. Lily began assisting her father with horse breaking at the age of six. She rode five hundred miles alone on her pony to go to her job as a teacher in a frontier village when she was fifteen years old. She acquired her driver's license ("I liked vehicles even more than horses. They didn't fly an aircraft, leave large mounds of dung around, or need feeding if they weren't working. She also managed a sizable ranch in Arizona with her husband Jim. She reared two children, Rosemary Smith Walls, Jeannette's iconic mother, who was brilliantly represented in The Glass Castle.

Lily weathered the Great Depression, storms, floods, droughts, and the most devastating human loss. Prejudice of all types infuriated her; prejudice against women, against Native Americans, against everyone who didn't fit the pattern. In this actual story, Jeannette Walls embodies the same spirit that Rosemary Smith Walls, Jeannette's grandmother, used to tell her. As captivating and dramatic as Beryl Markham's West with the Night or Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa, Half Broke Horses is Laura Ingalls Wilder for grownups. It is sure to become a classic and captivate audiences worldwide.