Jeannette Walls's Half Broke Horses was nothing short of spectacular. She brings us the story of her grandmother, told in a first-person voice that is authentic, irresistible, and triumphant. 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. Lily’s fiery attitude and thirst for justice lands her in trouble, which is very uncommon for a woman in the 1880’s.
Lily Casey grew up on farms in sparsely populated country, learning self-reliance and doing chores without complaint. At age 5, she helped her father train carriage-horse teams and, once a week, hitched up the buckboard and drove into a nearby town to sell eggs. After the family’s dugout collapsed in a flood …show more content…
But a neighbor, Old Man Pucket, shot the dogs almost immediately, claiming they had spooked his cattle. No matter. As the Ingalls family would say, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” As restitution, Old Man Pucket gave the Caseys eight “half-broke” mustangs — unshod and unused to the saddle. It was one of these, a mare, that Lily lassoed, tamed, broke and rode off on, alone, to a teaching job 500 miles west, in Red Lake, Ariz. She was 15 at the time, but Lily Casey wasn’t homesick; she relished her independence. “I’d been on the road, out in the sun and sleeping in the open, for 28 days. I was tired and caked with dirt. I’d lost weight, my clothes were heavy with grime and hung loosely, and when I looked in a mirror, my face seemed harder. . . . But I had made