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Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel
Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel
Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel
Audiobook7 hours

Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel

Written by Jeannette Walls

Narrated by Jeannette Walls

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

From the author of The Glass Castle and Hang the Moon—“Walls vividly depicts her astonishing, resilient grandmother with a lightness of touch that is plainspoken yet heartfelt” (Chicago Tribune). Half Broke Horses has transfixed readers everywhere.

“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 and fly a plane. And, with her husband, Jim, she ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one who 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 readers everywhere.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 6, 2009
ISBN9780743597234
Author

Jeannette Walls

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.

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Reviews for Half Broke Horses

Rating: 4.060355352941176 out of 5 stars
4/5

1,632 ratings154 reviews

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This author should it record her own books. In the epilogue, she speaks normally. However, during the book reading, she speaks in some weird rythm that breaks the sentences into phrases and reads too slowly. I had to spead up the recording in order to endure it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed this true-life novel from the author of The Glass Castle. Walls originally planned to tell the story of her mom growing up on an Arizona cattle ranch, but her mother kept insisting that HER mother's story was worth telling. And it was. Using her grandmother's voice to tell the story, Jeannette Walls introduces us to Lily Casey Smith. She led a very full life, mostly in the country, filled with dangers and fun times including first looks and tries at driving automobiles, flying airplanes, selling bootlegged alcohol from under the baby's crib. Her no-nonsense attitude and sense of duty trumped any affection she may have showed her family, yet they knew they were in solid hands. The paragraph I enjoyed most was a description about how ranchers wore in a pair of jeans: 'Levi's we didn't wash at all. They shrank too much, and it weakened the threads. So we wore them and wore them until they were shiny with mud, manure, tallow, cattle slobber, bacon fat, axle grease, and hoof oil--and then we wore them some more. Eventually, the Levi's reached a point of grime saturation where they couldn't get any dirtier, where they had the feel of oilskin and had become not just waterproof but briar-proof, and that was when you really knew you had broken them in. When Levi's reached that degree of conditioning, they were sort of like smoke-cured ham or aged bourbon, and you couldn't pay a cowboy to let you wash his' (144).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Quite the extraordinary woman, Lily was. Sometimes I just didn’t like her, and sometimes I cheered her on.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a good follow up if you have read The Glass Castle, also by the same author.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Jeannette is an amazing author and the historical fiction is so well done.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Loved this book. It takes place near where I am now living and it has helped me understand better the places Lily and her peeps endured.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I would recommend reading this book before her other book the Glass Castle. This book is about Jeanette’s very dynamic and interesting Grandmother. Through listening to her story, I think it would lead to an clearer understanding and maybe tolerance of Jeanette’s own mother in the second book
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Lily Casey Smith was one of the strong women of the west who helped to lead the way for other women that might want to do something out of the ordinary.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I won a copy of this book and I have to say, it has inspired me to write some of my remaining family’s history. The author’s words evoke images of life before all the amenities we now take for granted, in such a way that you yearn to have experienced the life of her grandmother, Lily. Lily is such a strong female character – I am happy her story has surfaced and made its way into the world – she demonstrates just how strong and savyy women really are, even in seemingly impossible situations.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Every bit as good as 'The Glass Castle'. Walls leads us through her courageous grandmother's life; based on truth, but because Lily was no longer alive to get the stories directly, Walls consulted her mother and substantiated as much as she could. Very well narrated by Walls also. If you enjoyed the first book, listen to or read this one also!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I thoroughly enjoyed this. Even more than the Glass Castle!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It was warm and interesting, I also listened to The Glass Castle. I enjoyed the additional back story and context this book provided.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A very fun read about a woman with gumption. Makes me want to interview my own grandmother before the opportunity passes. At times this was slightly repetitive, but it was always quick going. The descriptions of ranch life (and life generally) during the first half of the 20th century are fascinating and the best part, in my view.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I highly recommend the audio book, narrated by Lily's granddaughter and author of this story. Lily's resourcefulness and resolve is amazing and her character is written in such a way that she larger than life in her realness. Stay for the epilogue!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This "true-life novel" about the author's grandmother was more restrained than the wild ride of The Glass Castle. Lily Casey Smith was a "pistol" (as my grandmother used to say) who worked hard and had a no-nonsense approach to life. Through much of her life, she packed a pearl-handled pistol that her dad gave her when she left home at age 15 to ride alone 500 miles across the desert to her first teaching job. This was only the beginning of many adventures that Lily experienced.In everything she undertook she was tough and sassy like her heroine Scarlett O'Hara. However, she met her match in her daughter Rosemary (the author's mother) who demonstrated her odd behavior and wayward streak at a young age. Of course, you have to feel sorry for a kid who had no knowledge of Santa Claus, that "patron saint of department stores."Wells is a consummate storyteller, whether it is a memoir or a fictionalized account of an ancestor. I'd love to read a book about her great-grandfather who was fascinated by phonics and spoke in cliches. This family tree has the potential for many stories to come.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    My grandparents all have interesting stories, from my maternal grandmother who grew up in West Virginia and told about how they brushed their teeth with salt instead of toothpaste and washed their hair in kerosene when they got lice, to my paternal grandfather who left Spain at age thirteen when the Spanish Civil War was heating up and swears he met Ernest Hemingway while waiting to board the ship to the States. Last year I discovered that my paternal grandmother's family have lived in the North Carolina mountains for three hundred years; there have to be some interesting stories there.

    For years I've considered putting together these stories, either with the help of my dad and my sister or on my own, but I was always discouraged from proceeding with any of these in part because I felt bad picking one grandparent's story over another's, but more because it's never been clear to me which stories are factual and which are embellished to the point that they're more accurately described as fiction. And then there would be the difficulty of piecing together all of the disparate tales so the story read as a single work rather than a cobbling together of recollections.

    In Half Broke Horses, Jeannette Walls surmounts all of these obstacles to create an interesting, readable story written in the voice of her inimitable grandmother. Lily Casey Smith was clearly a rough-around-the-edges woman, but I found her mostly likable and enjoyed reading her story. Aside from the interest I took in Walls' decision to couch her story as fiction and how that freed her as a storyteller, my favorite part about this book was the description of the setting. Lily Casey Smith doesn't romanticize the Southwest, but she clearly loves it and is a part of it. Seeing Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas through her eyes made my heart yearn for sparsely populated open spaces (if not for scorpions and lack of water). I was daydreaming about a western road trip before I started reading, and now that I'm done with the book, I really want to hit the road (watching the movie Crazy Heart this weekend also contributed---how I miss those wide, open skies!).

    The only trouble I had with this book was that the stories sometimes didn't flow one into the next as smoothly as they might have, and especially towards the end, the narrative seemed to speed up and lack the lush detail it had earlier in the book. In a way, this reflects the way that time speeds up as our children get older, that uncanny way time has of rushing by each time we blink, but I still felt a little disappointed. I wanted more from that last third than what was there. At least I can follow it up with The Glass Castle.

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved that the author was the narrator. At times I felt that I knew Lilly and Jim like they could have been my elderly next door neighbors. Jeannette really brought the characters alive through this captivating novel. Well done.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An autobiographical novel centered on the author's grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who lived a tough life on the plains of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, with some time in Chicago that served to confirm her love of the West. Lily grew up helping her father break carriage horses, and she never lost her love for the animals. She spent her life working with horses and teaching school, eventually marrying and having a daughter, Mary, the mother of Jeannette. The family moved often, depending upon where they found work. Lily was opinionated, strong, and self-reliant. Reading this book is a great background to Walls' first book, The Glass Castle, a nonfiction memoir. Walls' writing is descriptive and gripping, making for a great read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    By the same author as The Glass Castle., which I loved. It is the life story of her maternal grandmother told narrated in the first person. Not being a huge fan of historical fiction, this book was engaging from the start.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Loosely biographical, Half Broke Horses tells the life story of the author's grandmother, and inadvertently her mother. I would almost say to read Glass Castles first, because then it is so clear that Jeannette Walls mother had a different take on the world from the very beginning.There are sad, funny, wild and amazing stories in this book.The style is narrative, in fact it feels like sitting down and listening to your parents or grandparents reminisce. Each chapter is a story, long or short, but they build a good overall picture of the life of the woman (Walls' grandmother)who is the narrator.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Good story of her feisty grandmother with enough fictionalizing to call it a novel. Well written.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Story of the author’s grandmother, Lily Casey, and her life of teaching and ranching in the desert near the Grand Canyon in Arizona in the early 1900s. At first, I thought this book was non-fiction, and it is based on a real person and her actual experiences, but Walls describes it as a novel, stating in the Author’s Note, “since I don’t have the words from Lily herself, and since I have also drawn on my imagination to fill in details that are hazy or missing…the only honest thing to do is call the book a novel.” It is written in first person as if her grandmother is telling her life story.

    Lily Casey is a colorful character who led an eventful life. The book is filled with family anecdotes of her adventures such as:
    -Surviving multiple 500-mile journeys alone by horse across the desert at age 15
    -Learning to fly an airplane at a time when air travel was fairly new
    -Teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in several small towns
    -Selling moonshine out of the back door of her house to make extra cash during Prohibition
    -Turning a hearse into a school bus
    -Figuring out how to capture water in the desert for the cattle ranch she and her husband managed

    I found this book entertaining and enjoyed “getting to know” Lily Casey. It provides a good idea of what life was like back in those times, with lots of mentions of how people lived – no indoor plumbing, listening to the radio, the hard work in getting almost anything accomplished. I think the author does a great job of capturing the voice of her grandmother and could almost hear her speaking in her no-nonsense manner. I have not yet read The Glass Castle, but this book provides a good foundation of how Walls’ mother was influenced by her grandmother and their early life on the ranch, so I look forward to reading it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Little House On the Prairie for grown-ups!

    Jeannette's grandmother is back with a poweful tale to tell in this true-to-life novel.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Read it for the second time and STILL give it a star rating! Now she should get to work on that "middle story"... the one about her mom. I know she said that was the original plan, but it's time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a fictionalized biography of Jeanette Walls' grandmother, Lily Casey Smith.Lily's father was disabled. He fancied himself as a horse trader and since, he could no longer do it himself, he had Lily breaking colts when she was six years old as a way of supporting his family.But Lily longed to go to school. When finally allowed a chance to attend, she enjoyed a Catholic boarding high school but her rough pioneer ways made her an unusual student who didn't fit in. When the money earmarked for her education was lost by her father in a get rich scheme, her teachers weren't sorry to see her go. Her father assumed she'd come back to the ranch, as he needed her to continue breaking horses for the family support.But Lily had had enough and at sixteen years old set out to take a teaching job at a time when war made certified teachers scarce. Deprived of a way to get there, she rode her horse five hundred miles by herself.Her career, her marriage, her ranch experiences, her realized ambition to pilot the thrilling, new-fangled airplanes, all illustrate an original, gun-toting, tough lady by-passing the conventions of the day.We also see a bit of Jeanette 's mother, Rose Mary Walls', rather chaotic childhood and young adulthood. She is the subject of Jeanette Walls' memoir The Glass Castle, which I haven't yet read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Read it in a big gulp. Loved the no nonsense Lily and the telling of her life story. Dovetailed Glass castles. Though she called it fiction because she had to shade in a lot of missing information and address conflicting accounts of her family's history. Excellent book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This rich, evocative literary novel-memoir is a true delight. The author recreated her grandmother's life as a story of fiction, but based on the true stories handed down through the family by her mother. Jeannette Walls doesn't disappoint.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Audiobook read by the author.In what she calls a “true life novel,” Walls turns her attention to her maternal grandmother: Lily Casey Smith. Not having the specifics of dialogue and thought, Walls felt it was not appropriate to call this nonfiction, yet it truly is her grandmother’s story.Walls is a wonderful storyteller; she really brings Lily and all the other characters to life. And what a life! Lily survived floods, a tornado, the Great Depression, financial losses, and the pain of personal tragedy. Yet she remained strong and steadfast in her goals. And she was fearless. Still in her teens, she left her home and rode her pony alone some five hundred miles to teach in a one-room school house in a frontier town. She learned to drive a car and fly a plane. She would not tolerate prejudice of any kind, and fought for her rights. She was not afraid to get her hands dirty or to tackle difficult tasks; she rolled her sleeves up and set to work. The author also does a fine job of putting the reader into this time and place. I could practically smell the horses, and feel the dust on my skin. I had a very clear picture in my head of this landscape, thanks to Walls’ skill. Walls narrated the audio book herself, and she does a marvelous job.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    About a third of the way through this book I realized I'd read it before. Still enjoyed it, but once it felt like familiar territory I put it down.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Jeannette Walls tells the story of her grandmother, Lily, in this book. Lily helped her father break horses, she rode five hundred miles on her pony at age fifteen to get to her teaching job, and she learned how to drive a car as well as fly a plane. She raised two children on a ranch she ran with her husband, and she survived many things - tornadoes, floods, droughts, the Great Depression, prejudice and personal tragedy.

    It’s such a good read.