Sancho
06-10-2010, 01:24 PM
http://i971.photobucket.com/albums/ae197/mollyandbruno/Half-broke.jpg
I only submit book reviews on books that I like. So here I go.
Half Broke Horses is called a “true life” novel, which means the novel is based on real people and real events, but a little artistic license was taken to flesh out the story. The first-person narrator, it turns out, is the author’s true-life grandmother – the bronco-busting, poker-playing, whiskey-drinking, school-teaching, bootlegging, barnstorming, Southwestern Renaissance woman – Lily Casey. It had to be a weird experience for Jeannette Walls to write such a personal account from the point of view of her grandmother, putting herself a generation ahead of her own mother, but somehow it worked. I liked Lily Casey’s voice. She told the story in her plain-spoken, pragmatic way. Here’s Lily introducing herself:
I was born in a dugout on the banks of the Salt Draw in 1901, the year after Dad got out of prison, where he’d been serving time on that trumped-up murder charge.
Okay, I’m ready to read on.
The novel follows the life of Lily Casey from her childhood and adolescence in West Texas and New Mexico to her first job as a school teacher in northern Arizona, where the eighth-grade education requirement was waved because there was a war on and teachers were scarce. Then the narrative takes us on through her adult life, mostly in rural Arizona, and the book ends with the birth of granddaughter, Jeannette. On the level of world events, of course, that spans two World Wars and the Great Depression. Speaking of which, the cover-art for the novel is one of those fantastic depression-era photos by Dorothea Lange. It features three children in front of a ramshackle farm house; each child is showing off what is presumably their most treasured possession. The older two are standing next to a bicycle and the younger one, barefooted and wearing a plain dress, is holding her kitty. It’s a good photo – time wise it doesn’t quite match up with Lily’s pre-WWI childhood – but it’s a good photo none-the-less. Even more fascinating than the cover photo, for me, were the family photos included at the beginning of each chapter.
I don’t want to spoil the story for anybody so I won’t get into what happens, when, or to whom, but I would like to listen to Lily’s voice for a moment. For me it was the most compelling facet of the book.
This is Lily on the temperance movement (a.k.a. the 18th amendment to the US Constitution):
Most folks in that part of Arizona didn’t pay much attention to Prohibition, considering it a perverse eastern aberration…Wasn’t no one going to come between a cowboy and his whiskey.
And this is Lily on Santa Claus:
For the most part, pioneers and ranchers didn’t have the time or money for gift giving and tree trimming, and they tended to treat Christmas like Prohibition, another eastern aberration that wasn’t of much concern to them. A couple of years back, when some missionaries were trying to dazzle the Navajos into converting, they had a gift-bearing Santa Claus jump out of a plane, but his parachute didn’t open, and he landed with a thud in front of the Indians, convincing them – and most of the rest of us – that the less we had to do with jolly old Saint Nick, the better off we’d be.
Lily on the Second World War (and the arid nature of the southwestern US):
The war was well under way by then, in both the Pacific and Europe, but aside from a shortage of gasoline, it had little impact on our life on the Colorado Plateau. The sun still rose over the Mogollon Rim, the grazing cattle still wandered the range, and while I prayed for the families who put gold stars in their windows because they’d lost sons in the fighting, truth be told, we still worried more about the rains than the Nips and the Nazis.
I felt I got to know Lily just as well through her no-nonsense, object-driven speech patterns as I did through the action of the story. I also enjoyed the idioms of the time and place that peppered her speech and which Jeannette Walls must have painstakingly researched. Anyway, it sounded authentic to me. It kept reminding me of the voice of my own grandmother who, like Lily, was only a first or second generation American, her people also driven out of Ireland by the potato blight.
Okay one more, just because it’s so much fun. Lily’s daughter, Rosemary, had a strong interest in the visual arts. And despite her opinion that art served no practical purpose, Lily is moved to action:
I finally took some of her drawings to a few frame shops and asked the clerks if they thought my daughter had any talent. They said she had promise, so I arranged for her to take lessons with Ernestine, an art teacher who wore a beret just in case you couldn’t tell from her accent that she was a Frog.
The title of the book refers to the wild horses that cowboys would catch, saddle train, use, and then occasionally set free, making the animals sort of half domesticated. Half broke horses also serves as a metaphor for Lily and her family. And if that is the theme of the book, the pervasive undercurrent of self-reliance works as a leitmotif. Lily lived her life without a safety net and she dealt with all obstacles, situations, and catastrophes as best she could – and with panache. This idea is crystallized by Mother Albertina, a nun at a Santa Fe parochial school. At age thirteen Lily attended the school, but she had to leave after only one semester because her father had squandered her tuition money on another of his money-making schemes. Lily is distraught and Mother Albertina tries to console her:
When God closes a window, he opens a door. But it’s up to you to find it.
I only submit book reviews on books that I like. So here I go.
Half Broke Horses is called a “true life” novel, which means the novel is based on real people and real events, but a little artistic license was taken to flesh out the story. The first-person narrator, it turns out, is the author’s true-life grandmother – the bronco-busting, poker-playing, whiskey-drinking, school-teaching, bootlegging, barnstorming, Southwestern Renaissance woman – Lily Casey. It had to be a weird experience for Jeannette Walls to write such a personal account from the point of view of her grandmother, putting herself a generation ahead of her own mother, but somehow it worked. I liked Lily Casey’s voice. She told the story in her plain-spoken, pragmatic way. Here’s Lily introducing herself:
I was born in a dugout on the banks of the Salt Draw in 1901, the year after Dad got out of prison, where he’d been serving time on that trumped-up murder charge.
Okay, I’m ready to read on.
The novel follows the life of Lily Casey from her childhood and adolescence in West Texas and New Mexico to her first job as a school teacher in northern Arizona, where the eighth-grade education requirement was waved because there was a war on and teachers were scarce. Then the narrative takes us on through her adult life, mostly in rural Arizona, and the book ends with the birth of granddaughter, Jeannette. On the level of world events, of course, that spans two World Wars and the Great Depression. Speaking of which, the cover-art for the novel is one of those fantastic depression-era photos by Dorothea Lange. It features three children in front of a ramshackle farm house; each child is showing off what is presumably their most treasured possession. The older two are standing next to a bicycle and the younger one, barefooted and wearing a plain dress, is holding her kitty. It’s a good photo – time wise it doesn’t quite match up with Lily’s pre-WWI childhood – but it’s a good photo none-the-less. Even more fascinating than the cover photo, for me, were the family photos included at the beginning of each chapter.
I don’t want to spoil the story for anybody so I won’t get into what happens, when, or to whom, but I would like to listen to Lily’s voice for a moment. For me it was the most compelling facet of the book.
This is Lily on the temperance movement (a.k.a. the 18th amendment to the US Constitution):
Most folks in that part of Arizona didn’t pay much attention to Prohibition, considering it a perverse eastern aberration…Wasn’t no one going to come between a cowboy and his whiskey.
And this is Lily on Santa Claus:
For the most part, pioneers and ranchers didn’t have the time or money for gift giving and tree trimming, and they tended to treat Christmas like Prohibition, another eastern aberration that wasn’t of much concern to them. A couple of years back, when some missionaries were trying to dazzle the Navajos into converting, they had a gift-bearing Santa Claus jump out of a plane, but his parachute didn’t open, and he landed with a thud in front of the Indians, convincing them – and most of the rest of us – that the less we had to do with jolly old Saint Nick, the better off we’d be.
Lily on the Second World War (and the arid nature of the southwestern US):
The war was well under way by then, in both the Pacific and Europe, but aside from a shortage of gasoline, it had little impact on our life on the Colorado Plateau. The sun still rose over the Mogollon Rim, the grazing cattle still wandered the range, and while I prayed for the families who put gold stars in their windows because they’d lost sons in the fighting, truth be told, we still worried more about the rains than the Nips and the Nazis.
I felt I got to know Lily just as well through her no-nonsense, object-driven speech patterns as I did through the action of the story. I also enjoyed the idioms of the time and place that peppered her speech and which Jeannette Walls must have painstakingly researched. Anyway, it sounded authentic to me. It kept reminding me of the voice of my own grandmother who, like Lily, was only a first or second generation American, her people also driven out of Ireland by the potato blight.
Okay one more, just because it’s so much fun. Lily’s daughter, Rosemary, had a strong interest in the visual arts. And despite her opinion that art served no practical purpose, Lily is moved to action:
I finally took some of her drawings to a few frame shops and asked the clerks if they thought my daughter had any talent. They said she had promise, so I arranged for her to take lessons with Ernestine, an art teacher who wore a beret just in case you couldn’t tell from her accent that she was a Frog.
The title of the book refers to the wild horses that cowboys would catch, saddle train, use, and then occasionally set free, making the animals sort of half domesticated. Half broke horses also serves as a metaphor for Lily and her family. And if that is the theme of the book, the pervasive undercurrent of self-reliance works as a leitmotif. Lily lived her life without a safety net and she dealt with all obstacles, situations, and catastrophes as best she could – and with panache. This idea is crystallized by Mother Albertina, a nun at a Santa Fe parochial school. At age thirteen Lily attended the school, but she had to leave after only one semester because her father had squandered her tuition money on another of his money-making schemes. Lily is distraught and Mother Albertina tries to console her:
When God closes a window, he opens a door. But it’s up to you to find it.