This is the second book I've read by this author and I have to say, I really like the way she writes. I feel like I'm reading a diary of a long-ago relative (though the book isn't written in diary style). It's a great story about a woman growing up in the "wild west" during the early 1900's, but she's not a "typical" woman of the era. She helps run ranches, teaches school, sells bootleg liquor from under her baby's crib to make ends meet....she just never allows anyone to fit her into a certain role or stereotype. A very entertaining book that makes you wonder how much of it is true and how much is creative writing but doesn't make you wonder why you're reading it.

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A very enjoyable read about a fiercely independent, rather remarkable young woman. She faced injustice and disappointments with a stubborn determination, learning to cope early in what was then very much a "man's" world.

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Another really good book by Jeannette Walls. It's hard to believe that this is actually an account of someone's life - it is so very interesting and full of adventure. How this family survived and even thrived throughout life with so little to call their own is just amazing. This was the story of her maternal grandmother's life -- it left me still wanting to know more from her mother's perspective. It's an easy read & I highly recommend it.

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While I didn't expect the author to top her previous book, The Glass Castle, I was wrong. I LOVED this book! It's the true-life story of the author's grandmother, who grew up in the early 1900's. It coveys a strong sense of what life was like in rural America at that time, and I loved the main character's spirit and determination. The author has a wonderful writing style, including just the right amount of detail to convey a feeling of the time and place without weighing down the story.

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This book is spell binding. It really brought to life a different time. The writer's grandmother, when she was 15, rode pony for three weeks across New Mexico and Arizona to take a job teaching.

Besides being a good book, this book solved an interesting problem for me. When my 90 year old mother was in the hospital, and we weren't sure that she was going to make it, I read her this book. Sometimes people want company, but we all run out of things to say. And as memory starts to slip we were doing the same topics over and over. So....

I started reading her this book. Everyone loved it. Even my Dad. Soon they were both talking about how the book reminded them of this and that. How things were similar for them and how they were different. At one point, my whole family was there, including my kids, and we had the room pretty full.

When I had to travel back home, Dad took over the reading, because they both wanted to see how it ends.

Linda O.

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For those who have read 'The Glass Castle" Jeannette
Walls has also given us another fascinating book. In her new book, she brings us the story of her grandmother, told in a first-person voice that is
authentic,irresistible,and triumphant.From the authors
notes Jeanette wrote In telling my grandmother's story, I never aspired to that sort of historical accuracy. I saw the book more in the vein of an oral history, a retelling of stories handed down by my family through the years, and undertaken with the storyteller's traditional liberties.
Once I started reading it was difficult to put it down

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In Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel Jeannette Walls takes true biographical material from the life of her maternal grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, and masterfully crafts it into a highly engaging, "true-life" novel. The colloquial and endearing first person narrative voice belongs to Lily herself. Thus an authentic, riveting tale of American life is spun, beginning with Lily's birth in a Texas homestead dugout in 1901 and weaving its way through her frontier life; through devastating acts of nature; a great depression; prejudice and intolerance against individualists, Native Americans and women; years of personal highs and lows, great joy and great tragedy. This smart approach puts the reader right on the pulsating heartbeat of this unusual and vibrant family ~ not only of her grandmother Lily, but also her spirited, half broke horse mother, Rosemary, first introduced to us in The Glass Castle: A Memoir. There is a beautiful, complementary overlapping of their stories, one which I found particularly captivating. Jeannette Walls' sensitive storytelling takes the reader closer and deeper into the soul of these unforgettable personalities of her special family.

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I really enjoyed this book. It's the author's grandmother's stories written down in the first person. I didn't realize when I first started reading this book that it's not really fiction. Everything that happened to Lily are true. The part that is fictional are all the thoughts that the author, Lily's grand-daughter, probably didn't know and made up. Unless it was a part of the oral history told to her. There's no way to know what parts she made up and what was originally told in the oral history.

Still, I thought the format made the story much more interesting to read than straight history and since I love historical fiction, it was a great read for me.

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Fascinating book about the life of the author's grandmother, born in Texas in 1901. Told in first-person POV, in two to three page vignettes throughout Lily's life, it's compelling and immediate. Walls presented it as fiction since she had to pick up the stories from others. What a personality she must have had - you would not forget meeting her. I was fascinated by the accounts of how she and her family lived in the early 1900s, the descriptions of the ranches and wild areas, and especially how, at the age of 15, she travelled 500 miles by horse to take a job as a teacher. Very very interesting.
There are so many mentions of the author's other book The Glass Castle that I looked that up. I think I'll skip it. Just from the reviews I think reading about how Rosemary's children lived would make me angry and sad, despite the "happy ending" mentioned for the author and her siblings. I might be wrong...but there are lots of other books waiting.

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Great writing - fab piece of history.

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I thought this was a fairly good book about a woman who lead an interesting life in the American West, but apparently it is better liked by those who have read and enjoyed the author's other book. I debated about one-third into it about even finishing it. I much prefer Sandra Day O'Connor's memoir about growing up on a remote ranch in AZ until she left home to go to high school.

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