When an author writes a book that is smashingly popular, i.e., Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle, I tend to avoid their next book, suspecting that the publisher is capitalizing on the author’s momentum to sell inferior work. I loved The Glass Castle; had put Walls on a pedestal; and didn’t want to be disappointed by Half Broke Horses. I wasn’t.It didn’t take long for Walls to hook me. First sentence out the chute told me she knew about animals, “Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did.” Then on page six she revealed that the subject of her book, her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, was born in West Texas near the Pecos River. So was I. Lily was a horsewoman born in 1901. My mom Willie was a horsewoman born in 1907.
Story goes like this. Lily Casey was born in a sod house on a desolate Texas prairie to a couple of eccentric parents (mom a wannabe “Lady,” dad preoccupied with litigation over disputed land). Even as a small child seems Lily had more sense then the rest of the family put together. As she said, “I used to break horses. I know how to take a fall.”
After the family moved to New Mexico, Lily was sent to boarding school in Santa Fe, but her father blew the tuition money on four Great Danes, which he saw as an investment. So at the age of 15, Lily strides her half broke horse Patches and rides 28 days, by herself, to northern Arizona to take a job teaching in a one-room schoolhouse. And although she drinks, races horses for money and plays a mean hand of poker, she gets fired for telling Mormon girls they have a choice. Click on Read More Below...
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