 | |
| Author | Jeannette Walls |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Simon and Schuster, Inc. |
Publication date | 2020 (hardcover) 2010 (paperback) |
| Pages | 288 (first edition) |
| Preceded by | The Glass Castle |
Half Broke Horses is a 2009 novel by the American writer Jeannette Walls detailing the life of her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith. [1] The book was published by Simon and Schuster.
Half Broke Horses is the story of Lily Casey Smith's life. Author Jeannette Walls, the granddaughter of Lily Casey Smith, wrote the book from Lily's perspective.
As a child growing up on the frontier in Texas, Lily learns how to break horses. At the age of fifteen, she rode five hundred miles, alone, to get to her job as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse. Later in her life, Lily runs a vast cattle ranch in Arizona, along with her second husband and their two children. A woman of many talents, Lily earns extra money at various points in her life by playing poker, selling bootleg liquor, and riding in horse races.
Half Broke Horses depicts the freedom of rural life, its joys and struggles, and celebrates the courage and spirit of its protagonist, Lily Casey Smith. Walls says the book is “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.” [2]
In The New York Times Book Review, critic Liesl Schillinger wrote, "Through the adventures of Lily Casey — mustang breaker, schoolteacher, ranch wife, bootlegger, poker player, racehorse rider, bush pilot and mother of two — Walls revisits the adrenaline-charged frontier background that gave her own mother a lifelong taste for vicissitude. 'I’m an excitement addict,' Rose Mary Walls liked to tell her children. And yet — can the contours of one woman’s life ever sufficiently explain the life that proceeds from hers? Rose Mary eventually found an anchor in the form of her daughter — the third generation of a line of indomitable women whose paths she has inscribed on the permanent record, enriching the common legend of our American past." [3] Critic Janet Maslin wrote of Jeannette Walls in The New York Times, "She has managed to make her second book almost as inviting as her first, even though its upright heroine is never as startling as Ms. Walls’s parents were." [4]
Charles Samuel Addams was an American cartoonist known for his darkly humorous and macabre characters. Some of his recurring characters became known as the Addams Family, and were subsequently popularized through various adaptations.
The Horse Whisperer is a 1998 American neo-western drama film directed by and starring Robert Redford, based on the 1995 novel The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans. Redford plays the title role, a talented trainer with a remarkable gift for understanding horses, who is hired to help an injured teenager and her horse back to health following a tragic accident.
Real Life is a 1979 American comedy film starring Albert Brooks, who also co-authored the screenplay. It is a spoof of the 1973 reality television program An American Family and portrays a documentary filmmaker named Albert Brooks who attempts to live with and film a dysfunctional family for one full year.
Alanna Kay Nash is an American journalist and biographer.
Walter Seff Isaacson is an American author, journalist, and professor. He has been the president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C., the chair and CEO of CNN, and the editor of Time.
Janet R. Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as a Times film critic from 1977 to 1999 and as a book critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000, Maslin helped found the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York. She is president of its board of directors.
Jeannette Walls is an American author and journalist widely known as former gossip columnist for MSNBC.com and author of The Glass Castle, a memoir of the nomadic family life of her childhood. Published in 2005, it had been on the New York Times Best Seller list for 421 weeks as of June 3, 2018. She is a 2006 recipient of the Alex Award and Christopher Award.
Lisa Grunwald Adler is an American author.
The Gathering is a 2007 novel by Irish writer Anne Enright. It won the 2007 Booker Prize.
The Glass Castle is a 2005 memoir by American author Jeannette Walls. Walls recounts her dysfunctional and nomadic yet vibrant upbringing, emphasizing her resilience and her father's attempts toward redemption. Despite her family's flaws, their love for each other and her unique perspective on life allowed her to create a successful life of her own, culminating in a career in journalism in New York City. The book's title refers to her father's ultimate unfulfilled promise, to build his dream home for the family: a glass castle.
Loving Frank is a 2007 American novel by Nancy Horan. It tells the story of Mamah Borthwick's illicit love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright and the public shame they experienced in early twentieth century America. It is a fictionalised account told from Borthwick's perspective, based on research conducted by Horan, and it is her debut novel. It depicts Borthwick’s life as it became intertwined with Wright's between the years of 1907 through 1914. By following the artistic aspirations and travels of the two main protagonists, the novel portrays the social mores of the times in the United States and Europe.
One Good Turn is a 2006 crime novel by Kate Atkinson set in Edinburgh during the Festival. “People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a brutal road rage incident - an incident that changes the lives of everyone involved.” It is the second novel to feature former private investigator Jackson Brodie and is set two years after the earlier Case Histories.
Death Comes to Pemberley is a 2011 mystery fiction novel by British writer P.D. James that continues Jane Austen's 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice with a murder mystery.
Eleanor Brown is an American novelist, anthologist, editor, teacher, and speaker. She is the New York Times and international bestselling author of novels The Weird Sisters and The Light of Paris.
Jeanne Darst is an American author. She is a regular contributor to This American Life and has written for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, and Vogue. Her memoir, Fiction Ruined My Family, was published in October 2011 by Riverhead Books.
What Wild Ecstasy: The Rise and Fall of the Sexual Revolution is a 1997 book about the sexual revolution by John Heidenry. The book received mixed reviews. It was described as interesting and Heidenry was complimented for his discussions of figures such as Bob Guccione, Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt, and Reuben Sturman. However, he was criticized for his research methods. He was accused of plagiarism because of the use he made of material by other writers, receiving criticism in particular from the journalist Philip Nobile. Critics also wrote that he focused disproportionately on pornography and gave insufficient attention to feminism and women's issues.
Boys in the Trees is a memoir by American singer-songwriter Carly Simon.
A Stolen Life: A Memoir is a true crime book by American kidnapping victim Jaycee Lee Dugard about the 18 years she spent while sequestered and enslaved with her captors in Antioch, California. The memoir dissects what she did to survive and cope mentally with extreme abuse. The book reached No. 1 on Amazon's sales rankings a day before release and topped The New York Times Best Seller list hardcover nonfiction for six weeks after release.
He's a Stud, She's a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know is a 2008 book by feminist writer Jessica Valenti. The 244-page work, commenting on 50 double-standards in expectations for women, is Valenti's second book.
The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire is a 2000 biographical book written by Gwenda Blair, an adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, about three generations of the Trump family, starting with Friedrich Trump (1869–1918) who immigrated to the United States in 1885 from Kingdom of Bavaria, then Fred Trump (1905–1999), and finally Donald Trump. It was first published by Simon & Schuster in 2000 and reprinted in 2015 with a new title, The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a President and a new preface.