Half Broke Horses

Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel
By: Jeannette Walls
Copyright: 2009
Scribner Publishing

4 Bookmarks out of 5

I don't know why, but I feel a need to justify the fact that this book is, indeed, 'hipster'. Jeannette Walls took off in 2005 with The Glass Castle - a book which kept my sister and our two suite-mates company in the bathroom our freshman year of college. Hey, it's college. If we were going to read in the bathroom, it might as well be memorable. I recall Franz Kafka in there too. Anyway, the memoir has been published in more languages than I knew existed and is critically acclaimed. Half Broke Horses is Jeannette Walls' follow up to her first book.

That being said - this book is not a memoir. It's exactly what the cover says - a novel. It draws you in to life in Texas and Arizona at the beginning of the 20th century. In this aspect, it's fascinating to see how slow modernization was to come to the small towns of America. Lily Casey, the story's main character, really embodies the last of the wild west generation - a generation who carried their own pistols and settled disputes with neighbors themselves and told the police to keep out of it. Half Broke Horses follows her story - from just before World War I to just after World War II - and how Lily Casey tries to take on Chicago but always comes back to Arizona and the ranching way of life. That's really the book's best angle - it shows a snapshot of an Arizona that many people failed to realize existed not too long ago.

That being said, I think that the book falls flat in the character of Lily in the fact that she never really allows herself to feel anything. Whenever times were rough, she got through it by 'toughing it out'. She toughed it out because that's what she had to do. But Lily only cries once in the book, although I know if I went through half the events Lily went through I would have cried every day and thrown in the towel long before she did. I also found it very disconcerting that Lily never is able to trust a man after her first husband. Seriously? Not every man is the same, which Lily all but says except for coming straight out to say it. Although, at the end of the book, she does hint at affection toward her husband Jim Smith. All the bad stuff aside, I think of Lily Casey as a woman who was going to do what she wanted and wasn't going to take no for an answer - a good role model for all girls these days. You know - besides the fact that Lily thinks the only occupations for women are nurses, secretaries, and teachers and teaching seems to be the best one out of all three because you can be your own boss. (Although Lily is surely rolling in her grave thinking of what the education system today looks like. A long way from the one-room schoolhouse.)

The book also only gets 4 bookmarks because at the end - once again - Jeannette Walls finds a way to turn the book back around to her. Maybe it's because her first memoir was such a big smash that she wanted to remind readers that Lily was her grandmother - but I found it just sad and a call for attention. Although the end of the book lagged and Lily was entirely too concerned who Rosemary was going to marry, I could deal with it because I think that is a concern all mothers have. But the epilogue was entirely unnecessary and took away from Lily's life, in my own opinion.

All in all - this is a good read. I wouldn't rush to buy it off the shelves - but it's great if you are interested in the end of the wild west and the modernization of America. Which, by the way, I think is a totally cool topic. But as a story, don't expect heartfelt soliloquies from the characters at any given point.