Fiction Addict

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: Scribner

Publication date: October 2009

Reviewed by Jennifer Roman

After reading Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle, I was anxious to read her second book, Half Broke Horses.  While Half Broke Horses wasn’t quite as captivating as The Glass Castle, it still made me glad I read it.

Set in the early 1900s in Texas and later Arizona, Half Broke Horses tells the story of Walls’ maternal grandmother’s life from childhood to middle age.  She writes in the first person of Lily Casey Smith, a plucky ranch girl who learns life lessons the hard way.  Nothing is easy for Lily, whether it be in education, work, or her love life.  She wants to get an education, but her mother doesn’t think education is necessary for girls.  She struggles with trying to make money during the Great Depression, and she marries a man who is already married with a child and one on the way.  Throughout her struggles, though, Lily always keeps a stiff upper lip and creatively makes things work for her.

This book is labeled a novel because while the stories are handed down from generation to generation, Walls is unable to substantiate everything.  Rather, she describes the book as “a true-life novel.”  It reads not as a novel, though, but as a series of short stories.  Half Broke Horses showcases the grit, the determination, and the often wacky lifestyle of Americans who did what they had to do in order to survive.  Readers will enjoy Lily’s frank and often un-PC opinions, which often get her into trouble.  They will enjoy how each story builds on the previous one to explain her life choices and struggles.

I mention that it is not as captivating as The Glass Castle, but that is only because it is hard to compete with a book about growing up with an immature, unhinged mother and an alcoholic, con-man father.  Where Jeannette’s mother is flighty and interested in art, her grandmother is staunch and grounded.  Her father feeds her mother’s whims, while her grandfather works hard physical labor every day to provide for his family.  Working hard to make ends meet isn’t as fascinating as a dysfunctional family, but Walls still manages to honor her grandparents with colorful stories of their life during courtship and raising small children.  For anyone interested in learning how life was out West at the turn of the century, this book is for them.