Half Broke Horses

Half Broke Horses (2009) by Jeanette Walls. Walls, author of "The Glass Castle," here delves deeper into the past, telling the story of her own grandmother, Lily Casey Smith. She calls it a true-life novel, since it is basically culled from true events, although she has had to fictionalize certain parts of the story due to gaps in knowledge or the need to protect someone's privacy. This is a slender volume, with a lot of short chapters, which made it compulsively readable to me. It was fascinating to discover this slice of the origins of Jeanette Walls, like filling in part of the background of a painting of which you could previously see only the foreground clearly. Lily Casey Smith was truly a frontier woman, living as she did in the Southwest U.S. from the early years of the 20th century through and beyond World War II. Her life is in many ways a quintessentially American life, and through it we can see a little of ourselves refracted. I would recommend this book to anyone, but for the fullest enjoyment, read "The Glass Castle" first. Grade: A