Half Broke Horses, By Jeannette Walls
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.In her bestselling 2005 memoir The Glass Castle, American journalist Jeannette Walls recalled a childhood that gave dysfunction a new name. As she was raised by an alcoholic father and an eccentric mother, there were times when Wall and her siblings slept in cardboard boxes and subsisted on margarine and cat-food. How such untamed characters slipped under society's net is partially explored by this new book – a fictionalised re-telling of the life of her maternal grandmother, Lily Casey.
Born into a frontier-family in Western Texas in 1901, Lily was raised in a dugout: "more or less a big hole on the side of the riverbank". Her father was brain-damaged as a toddler, and her mother "worked hard" at being a lady. By the age of five, Lily was training her father's horses; aged 15, she saddled up her mare, Patch, and set out to make a new life as a teacher in Arizona. She moved to Chicago, married a bigamist "crumb bum", and moved back to Red Lake to teach.
As a record of ranch life before and during the Depression, Wall's book makes for a riveting read. There is little analysis of Lily's emotional state or historical exposition, but as retold "oral" history, it offers a shoot-from-the-hip account of a woman who sampled all the freewheeling delights and crippling hardships of the period. "Levi's we didn't wash at all," she explains at one point. "We wore them until they were shiny with mud, manure, tallow, cattle slobber, bacon fat, axle grease, and hoof oil – and then wore them some more."
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments