Half Broke Horses - Couverture souple

Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did. So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, Jeannette
Walls s no nonsense, resourceful, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town riding five hundred miles on her pony, alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car ( I loved cars even more than I loved horses. They didn t need to be fed if
they weren t working, and they didn t leave big piles of manure all over the place ) and fly a plane. And, with her husband Jim, she ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom is Jeannette s memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls, unforgettably portrayed in The Glass Castle.

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. Half Broke Horses is Laura Ingalls Wilder for adults, as riveting and dramatic as Isak Dinesen s Out of Africa or Beryl Markham s West with the Night. Destined to become a classic, it will transfix readers everywhere.

Lily Casey Smith is a sassy, straight-talking heroine for whom saving lives, taming wild horses and beating ranch hands at poker are all in a day's work. Born in 1901, in a dirt house in the rolling gritty grassland of Texas, at age six she is helping her father break horses. At fifteen she leaves home to teach in a town five hundred miles away, riding there on her pony, all alone. Lily handles everything that life throws at her - flash floods and tornadoes, the Great Depression, the most heartbreaking personal tragedy - with immense courage and determination and a wide smile.
The story of Lily's life has been passed down from one generation of her family to another. Now, in the words of her granddaughter Jeannette Walls, who draws on her own vivid imagination and compelling narrative powers, Lily's indomitable passion and spirit will shine through to readers everywhere, in this extraordinary true-life novel.