AOT #189: Jeannette Walls Podcasts Half Broke Horses
November 23, 2009 by Rob
Filed under Book Store Events
Journalist Jeanette Walls, author of the critically acclaimed memoir The Glass Castle, discusses her new novel Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel, the story of her grandmother, told in a first-person voice that is authentic, irresistible, and triumphant. Lily Casey Smith, Jeannette Walls’s no nonsense, resourceful, and spectacularly compelling grandmother, lived a life of adventure, toil, heartbreak and triumph. Half Broke Horses is Laura Ingalls Wilder for adults, as riveting and dramatic as Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa or Beryl Markham’s West with the Night.
($25.00) Scribner ISBN #978-1-41658-628-9.
A message for Jeannette Walls. Lily Smith was my teacher at Horse Mesa when I was in 6th and 7th grade. Must have been about 1950. She was a great teacher, strict but not overly so. We were all a bunch of renegade wild ones, I’m sure, living in that incredible wild country. I can see her in my mind’s eye but don’t have any photos of her. I wish I had known more about her, other than the fact she was Mrs. Smith and Jim Smith drove the road grader on our “not for sissies” road. I was horse crazy so would have loved to hear about her adventures from her own mouth but she didn’t share.
Thanks so much for your most enjoyable books that I had a personal connection to!. Maggie Bryce