Half Broke Horses
Jeanette Walls is a writer I’d aspire to be, if that’s how it worked and ink could be conjured. In Half Broke Horses she spins the story of her grandmother, Lily Casey, in a series of episodes that sing like old cowboy songs. “Mustang breaker, schoolteacher, ranch wife, bootlegger, poker player, racehorse rider, bush pilot and mother of two,” Casey made me want to be stronger, laugh louder and learn to fly. Maslin’s review in the New York Times took a typical “lacey pants” slant to the aphorisms and expressions such as “you’re really frying my bacon”, describing the style as “pert…repetitive and grating”. In my mind, Walls’s form and language spoke to the style of storytelling in the West, to her characters and their humdrum, wild, bootstraps lives. Liesl Schillinger’s review, while more of a recap than a critique, ended by describing Walls as “the third generation of a line of indomnitable women whose paths she has inscribed on the permanent record, enriching the common legend of our American past.” Legend has its own tenor, and Walls has hit it beautifully.
Illustration by Shannon Freshwater; image from Half Broke Horses.
