September 27, 2009
Half Broke Horses
A True-Life Novel
Walls, known for her memoir The Glass Castle (2005), novelizes the life of her remarkable maternal grandmother, Lily Casey Smith. Told in the first person, Lily spends her childhood breaking horses on ranches in West Texas and New Mexico, travels 500 miles on horseback to become a 15-year-old teacher in a remote frontier town, and sells bootleg liquor with her rancher husband during the Depression to make ends meet. Kirkus Reviews writes, “Lily is one tough bird, and like her grandmother, Walls knows how to tell a story with love and grit.”
