Half Broke Horses

by Jeannette Walls

Lily Casey is the protagonist of this “true-life novel,” and the story comes alive through her point of view. Born in 1901, Lily started life in west Texas on a 160 acre ranch that was too small and too dry. She was a hard worker, but she never felt sorry for herself. Her father had been kicked in the head when he was three years old and had a speech impediment. The family moved to New Mexico when the father was released from jail. Lily managed the ranch while her father wrote about Billy the Kid. Her mother was raised to be a lady.

Lily had a life of adventures. She unknowingly married a bigamist.  She learned how to break horses, teach school, drive a car, and fly an airplane. She survived a tornado and poverty. She worked as a maid, but was fired for her attitude. To have a baby, she married Jim Smith who was equally hard working and honest, valuable qualities for the couple living in the Dust Bowl during the Depression. They had two children, Rosemary and Little Jim, who practically grew up on horseback until they were sent to boarding schools which neither child liked.

A British investment company bought a large, remote ranch and hired Jim to oversee it. Lily was an equal partner in their marriage. She came up with a plan to build a dam on the property since no one was getting water from wells. Her ingenuity  and their hard work turned the ranch into a success. The couple wanted to have their own ranch, but didn’t want a mortgage. They were frugal and creative with money-making schemes. 

Rosemary was an artistic, free spirit with the same determination that her mother had. They did not get along well and much of the book deals with their conflicts. 

Half Broke Horses is character driven, but also gives what seems like a first hand view of life in the early 1900’s. It is, however,  derived from the memories of Rosemary, the author’s mother, and the tales Lily told her daughter. Lily was always trying to teach her children life lessons although they often rebelled. About three-fourths of the way through the book, there is an incident that is dark, and it changes the perspectives and life trajectories of Rosemary and Lily. There are a lot of sad events in this book, but this one threw a pall over it for me. Regardless, as the author refers to it as a “true-life” novel, the reader expects veracity, and anything less would be whitewashing their lives, thereby diminishing the honest relationship already established between the author and the reader.

Rating: 4/5

Category: (Biographical) Historical Fiction 

Notes: Written by the granddaughter of the protagonist

Publication:   2009—Scribner

Memorable Lines:

I was leaving the city with about as much stuff as I had arrived  with. But I had learned a lot—about myself and other people. Most of those lessons had been hard ones. For example, if people want to steal from you, they get you to trust them first. And what they take from you is not only your money but also your trust.

I realized that in the months since Helen had died, I hadn’t been paying much attention to things like the sunrise, but that old sun had been coming up anyway. It didn’t really care how I felt, it was going to rise and set regardless of whether I noticed it, and if I was going to enjoy it, that was up to me.

…I realized that you can get so used to certain luxuries that you start to think they’re necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don’t need them after all. There was a big difference between needing things and wanting things—though a lot of people had trouble telling the two apart—and at the ranch, I could see, we’d have pretty much everything we’d need but precious little else.