Welcome to my blog where I share my book reviews
and life along the winding road

Friday, September 13, 2019

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

In Half Broke Horses, Jeannette Walls brings her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith to life with intriguing stories and showing her grandmother's admirable grit. Lily is no shrinking violet, and attacks every problem full on, helping her father break in horses, building a garage and home with her husband, treking 500 miles across the country to a school teacher's job with only her horse, Patches, for company.

The story starts with a flash flood during which Lily encourages her siblings to climb a cottonwood tree and hold on for hours until the flood recedes. They live in a dugout which her mother (of refined nature) tries to make it as gentile as possible with an Oriental rug, chaise lounge, lace doilies and velvet curtains, but scorpions, lizards, snakes and gophers also inhabited the space and sometimes during a rain storm, a goat would stick a hoof through the mud roof. Unlike her mother and sister Helen, Lily is far from gentile and learns how to fall and roll from a bucking horse, and helps her father on their spread. But it's not only the story that is enticing, but Jeanette Walls style of writing that keeps the reader hooked until the very end.