‘Half Broke Horses’

There are “Half Broke Horses” of the human variety in Jeannette Walls’ new book of that name—Walls, her mother and her grandmother among them. All three are tough, intelligent, and often running on pluck, but it is Walls’ spirited grandmother who holds center stage here, a woman born in 1901 in the gritty horse lands of the American West. Lily Casey Smith was a force, it seems, from birth. She was not yet 20 when she became known as “the mustang-breaking, poker-playing, horse-race-winning schoolmarm of Coconino County.” She wasn’t much older when she took up the automobile, became a rum runner, then a biplane pilot. She was a rancher for years, a wife and mother of two (including the wild and willful Rosemary, later known as Rose Mary). She was, in short, a sort of Sarah Palin of her day: People always knew when the outspoken Lily was around — as they would her daughter Rosemary and, in turn, Rosemary’s daughter, Jeannette. We know because we remember all three women from Walls’ widely read memoir, “The Glass Castle.” In fact, “Half Broke Horses” is a prequel to the earlier book, giving us only a reversal in time and the teller...read more