Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel by Walls, Jeannette

Jeannette Walls's The Glass Castle was "nothing short of spectacular" (Entertainment Weekly). Now she brings us the story of her grandmother -- told in a voice so authentic and compelling that the book is destined to become an instant classic.

"Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, in Jeannette Walls's magnificent, true-life novel based on her no-nonsense, resourceful, hard working, 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, all 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, 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. 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. It will transfix readers everywhere.

Author: Jeannette Walls
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Published: 10/06/2009
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.09lbs
Size: 9.22h x 6.27w x 0.94d
ISBN: 9781416586289

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 6.5
Point Value: 13
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 133777 / Half Broke Horses: A True Life Novel


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 06/01/2009 pg. 28
Library Journal Prepub Alert 06/01/2009 pg. 70
Kirkus Reviews 07/01/2009
Library Journal 07/15/2009 pg. 93
Booklist 09/01/2009 pg. 38
Entertainment Weekly 10/09/2009 pg. 101
People Weekly 10/19/2009 pg. 69
New York Times Book Review 10/18/2009 pg. 1
New York Times Book Review 10/25/2009 pg. 22
NY Times Notable Bks of Year 12/06/2009 pg. 21
New York Times Book Review 12/13/2009 pg. 10

About the Author
Jeannette Walls graduated from Barnard College and was a journalist in New York. Her memoir, The Glass Castle, has been a New York Times bestseller for more than eight years. She is also the author of the instant New York Times bestsellers The Silver Star and Half Broke Horses, which was named one of the ten best books of 2009 by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. Walls lives in rural Virginia with her husband, the writer John Taylor.