Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel

by Jeannette Walls | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: 1416586296 Global Overview for this book
Registered by wingDove-i-Libriwing of Cape Coral, Florida USA on 7/8/2012
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7 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by wingDove-i-Libriwing from Cape Coral, Florida USA on Sunday, July 8, 2012
New York Times Sunday Book Review By LIESL SCHILLINGER
Published: October 15, 2009
"Jeannette Walls was raised in poverty and hardship by skittish, eccentrically idealistic, profoundly unfit parents. As Rex and Rose Mary Walls caromed between dying mining towns, both of them too willful to hold down a job, their four children slept in cardboard boxes, set themselves on fire, subsisted on margarine and cat food, and, as they grew older, struggled to hide their meager earnings from their father, who cheerfully robbed them to pay for his alcoholic sprees. Anyone who devoured Walls’s incandescent 2005 memoir, “The Glass Castle,” has wondered: How did such untamed characters come to exist in America, in the not-so-distant 1960s and ’70s? Walls’s new book, “Half Broke Horses,” a novelistic re-creation of the life of her maternal grand­mother, Lily Casey Smith, in the first half of the 20th century, told in her grandmother’s voice, gives a partial answer to that perplexing question. 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. “I’m an excitement addict,” Rose Mary Walls liked to tell her children. And yet — can the contours of one woman’s life ever sufficiently explain the life that proceeds from hers?
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I had wanted to read this ever since I'd read “The Glass Castle,” but right now I have over 200+ books on my To Be Read pile, so I'm going to search wishlists and surprise someone!
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Reserved for BookLady331!

Released 11 yrs ago (11/7/2012 UTC) at ~~~ ♥ ~~~ A Friend ~~~ ♥ ~~~, -- By post or by hand/ in person -- USA

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☺ Happy Traveling, Book! ☺
☺ Happy Reading, BookLady331! ☺

Journal Entry 3 by wingbooklady331wing at Cape Coral, Florida USA on Friday, November 9, 2012
It was great meeting up with you. Thank you for this wish list book. I read The Glass Castle, so I thought I would go ahead and read the second book. You are a WONDERFUL person.

Journal Entry 4 by wingbooklady331wing at Cape Coral, Florida USA on Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Thank you my dear friend. This book is next up on the list and should be started in a day or two.

Journal Entry 5 by wingbooklady331wing at Cape Coral, Florida USA on Sunday, January 20, 2013
Half Broke Horses is about Lily the author's grandmother. She is presents as the heroine, a real life pioneer woman.

The book that is a story with fascinating details about the American Southwest at the turn of the century. There is the lack of human feeling. There's plenty of sweat, and that makes the characters very admirable. Events that would scar any normal human heart happen without even drawing a drop of blood or tears or sighs.

And yet the events of her life show that Lily did many things that required courage, strength, love, and dedication, and that heartbreak touched her life more than once. But not only does the author not dwell upon Lily's feelings and the emotions that must have kept her going or threatened to sink her, they are never mentioned.

The author seems to admire Lily. It appears to me that Lily's emotional distance from herself and others may have contributed to her troubles, it also distances us from her story, which starts to seem like a long series of half truths. I had some difficulty believing parts of the story and wondered about Jim and Lily's marriage. Jim was like a comma who only appeared when he had to.


Journal Entry 6 by wingbooklady331wing at Cape Coral, Florida USA on Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Released 10 yrs ago (7/2/2013 UTC) at Cape Coral, Florida USA

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Enjoy! Off to oliviapoolside for the ABC virtual bookbox. Glad the book can continue its journey in the bookcrossing world.

Journal Entry 7 by BooksandMusic at Seattle, Washington USA on Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Book has arrived, thank you.

Journal Entry 8 by BooksandMusic at Seattle, Washington USA on Wednesday, May 20, 2015


Jeannette Walls writes stories about her grandmother as told to her by her mother. It follows the timeline of her grandmother's life but is written in short, vignette like chapters. It helps to give some explanation for the crazy upbringing that Jeanette Walls tells us about in The Glass Castle.
The grandmother had a very full and interesting life starting in a dirt house, helping her father train horses and run a working ranch, teaching in one room school houses, marriage and divorce to a bigamist in Chicago, the suicide of her younger sister, marriage to Big Jim and running cattle ranches with him and raising two children with him one of whom is Rosemary, Jeannette's mother. Rosemary grows up to marry Rex and so begins Jeannette's wild upbringing.
When I read the story I couldn't help but think that things might have been different for Rosemary if she had been allowed to marry the Indian boy she had a crush on, or if that was unrealistic, if she had been gently told that her interest in the boy could be his undoing (rather than being severely whipped for her interest) and if the "do-gooders" had minded their own business and the Indians were not their business, or if Rosemary had never been taken off the ranch and sent to boarding schools. Speaking of the Indian boy, that story of taking the "do-gooders" up to the Havasupai tribe was the most upsetting in the book. Fidel, the subject of Rosemary's crush, tells Lily and Rosemary "You people think you're rescuing these children, but they just end up unfit for both the valley and the world outside. Take it from me. I was sent to that school."
Rosemary says, "Well at least when you left, you didn't turn to stone." (there was a legend that any Havasupai who left the tribe for good would be turned to stone)
Fidel answers, "What turns to stone is inside you."
In the end Lily feels that she failed in the raising of Rosemary and considers Rosemary the one child that she could not teach. But things were as they were; Rosemary and crazy Rex got married, and the rest is history as told to us by Jeannette in The Glass Castle.

Journal Entry 9 by BooksandMusic at Seattle, Washington USA on Monday, June 15, 2015
I am listing this book in JennyC1230's Bio/Humor VBB.

Journal Entry 10 by BooksandMusic at Seattle, Washington USA on Thursday, July 30, 2015

Released 8 yrs ago (7/28/2015 UTC) at Seattle, Washington USA

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Requested and mailed. Bye bye book! Hope your new readers like you.

Journal Entry 11 by dabercro at Clinton, Utah USA on Friday, July 31, 2015
This book was waiting for me at the post office today when I returned from my trip. Thanks, BooksandMusic, for sending.

Journal Entry 12 by dabercro at Clinton, Utah USA on Thursday, September 3, 2015
I read this author's book, The Glass Castle, a couple of months ago. I was interested in reading this book to see if it helped to explain why Jeannette's mother, Rosemary, was so eccentric. I didn't feel like this book really answered any questions for me about Rosemary although I did enjoy the book. This book was about Lily, Jeannette's grandmother's, life. Jeannette got her strength and ingenuity from her grandmother.

Journal Entry 13 by dabercro at A Fellow BookCrosser, -- By post or by hand/ in person -- USA on Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Released 8 yrs ago (9/17/2015 UTC) at A Fellow BookCrosser, -- By post or by hand/ in person -- USA

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Passing on to Aberpeter in WA.

Journal Entry 14 by Aberpeter at Kirkland, Washington USA on Thursday, September 17, 2015
thanks dabercro

Journal Entry 15 by Aberpeter at Kirkland, Washington USA on Thursday, March 17, 2022
I very much enjoyed being sucked into the stories of Lily Casey Smith. Told in Lily's voice, the stories are told in vignettes. I could imagine myself sitting down with Lily over a cup of coffee (if she even sat down for a moment as she always seemed to be busy with something) as she told stories of her life. She was a no nonsense, hard-working, independent woman who did not hesitate to stand up for what she believed was right.

I'll be adding "The Glass Castle" to my wishlist as I am now very interested to learn more about Lily's daughter Rosemary.

Journal Entry 16 by Aberpeter at Renton, Washington USA on Friday, July 15, 2022

Released 1 yr ago (7/15/2022 UTC) at Renton, Washington USA

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Adding to the first sentence Wrap it Up Bookbox. The first sentence:

"Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did."

Journal Entry 17 by wingLaveggioCoffeewing at Binghamton, New York USA on Saturday, August 20, 2022
taken out of Rhythmbiscuit's First Sentence Wrap-It-Up Rd 4 bookbox.

not sure about this one yet, I know I have had another copy at some point, I either already have it on my TBR shelf or I had passed along. I don't recall reading it.


Journal Entry 18 by wingLaveggioCoffeewing at A BookCrosser, A Bookcrossing member -- Controlled Releases on Saturday, November 26, 2022

Released 1 yr ago (11/25/2022 UTC) at A BookCrosser, A Bookcrossing member -- Controlled Releases

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sent off in innae's Animals Bookbox

Happy Travels

2022 Keep Them Moving Release Challenge

Journal Entry 19 by wingAzukiwing at Miami, Florida USA on Thursday, December 22, 2022
Wow what a well travelled little book! 10 years and counting!

Journal Entry 20 by wingAzukiwing at Miami, Florida USA on Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Jeannette Walls's grandmother is a character indeed!! Indomitable, adventurous, resourceful, and proud, even by today's standard she's impressive, let alone in the era she was born in. I couldn't remember the details of Walls's previous book, The Glass Castle, except that there is a similar sense of poverty and chaos as in Lily's and Rosemary's lives, and the need to make lemonade out of lemons, so to speak. The few stories about Rex gives a good idea of what Jeannette's life will be like, and make me want to re-read the first book. I do feel uncomfortable about Lily's attitude that she has to beat a lesson into a child, but I suppose in those days, the attitude is "spare the rod and spoil the child."

I think this little book has completed its US tour and may be interested in heading to Europe next?

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