Synopsis
Jeannette Walls mined her own life and the life of her idiosyncratic parents for her blockbuster memoir THE GLASS CASTLE. Now for her "true life" novel HALF BROKE HORSES she uses the rich material of her real-life grandmother to tell an unforgettable story of a spirited woman living a rugged life in the American southwest. Lily Casey Smith, the novel's narrator, grew up in poverty in Texas and by the age of six was already helping her father break horses. By fifteen she was out on her own, traveling hundreds of miles to find work. Despite her bad luck--an abusive bigamist husband, natural catastrophes of all kinds, and the abject impoverishment of The Great Depression--Lily is full of pluck. Her headstrong nature and powerful sense of social justice sometimes get her into predicaments, but her indomitable spirit and can-do attitude gets her back out of them.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2009-10-06 | | Series: | True Life |
| Size | | Length: | 272 pages | | Height: | 9.3 in | | Width: | 6.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 17.6 oz |
Publisher's Note
The author offers a novel based on the life of her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who learned to break horses in childhood, journeyed 500 miles on pony as a teen to become a teacher, and ran a vast ranch in Arizona with her husband while raising two children, including Rosemary Smith Walls, portrayed in the author's acclaimed The Glass Castle.
Industry Reviews
"Walls does her grandmother proud in this historically revealing and triumphant novel of a fearless, progressive woman who will not be corralled....Fact, fiction, either way, every tall-tale episode in Lily's rough-and-tumble life is hugely entertaining and provocative, while Walls prose is as crystal clear and reviving as the water Lily cherishes in the high desert." (starred review)
(09/01/2009)
"[I]n an elegant act of literary transubstantiation, Walls gives first person voice to a kinswoman born too soon to participate in today's memoir boom. She also provides further insight into how she herself got to be the tough, tender, fearless writer she is."
(10/09/2009)
"[T]he author comes from a family that knew how to lure horses using grain, not rope. And she has inherited a version of that skill. So she has managed to make her second book almost as inviting as her first, even though its upright heroine is never as startling as Ms. Walls's parents were."
(10/07/2009)
"Through the adventures of Lily Casey--mustang breaker, schoolteacher, ranch wife, bootlegger, poker player, racehorse rider, bush pilot and mother of two--Walls revisits the adrenaline-charged frontier background that gave her own mother a lifelong taste for vicissitude."
(10/15/2009)
"The portrait Walls seems most charmed by is that of tough, headstrong women who make their own luck with whatever they possess, learning from mistakes along the way....[I]n this case, Walls is the one figuring out what is learned, just as we are each left to make sense of how those who came before us shape who we are now."
(11/03/2009)
| See an error? Submit a change request |
All rights reserved.
