Book: Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

Jeannette's grandmother was Lily Casey Smith and this is mostly her story. Lily grew up early in the 20th century in Arizona and New Mexico. This is a "true life novel" according to the author, and she does an wonderful job of portraying her feisty, intelligent, hard-working, slightly wild grandmother, Lily.

Lily's life is full of incredible stories: For example, at age 15, rode her horse Patches for 28 days, "out in the sun and sleeping in the open" to the town of Red Lake, a small town south of the Grand Canyon to become a school teacher in a one-room schoolhouse. She slept on the floor.

She broke horses, carried a pistol in her purse, learned to fly a plane, taught school off and on and eventually graduated from college herself. She worked a few years in Chicago, but then came back to the Southwest and married Jim Smith. They had 2 kids, Rosemary (the author's Mother) and Jim.

Lily discretely sold liquor during Prohibition to supplement the family's income, hiding the bottles under her baby's skirted crib; she played poker and often won; she dabbled in politics, and she and her husband managed a huge cattle ranch for some wealthy Englishmen...a 180,000 acre ranch.

Of course, she periodically got in trouble, one time for trying to enlighten her Mormon girl students about the larger world and their larger choices than "being broodmares dressed in feed sacks."

On one trip, she guided two social workers to the Havasupai at the bottom of the Grand Canyon so they could see if the kids met "hygiene standards" and to "investigate the living conditions of the children..." Her daughter, Rosemary, thought she had entered the Garden of Eden down there and wanted to stay.

The family often traveled Route 66 before and after it was paved, and they often just drove cross-country. They survived flash floods, tornados, drought and bankruptcy.... all those dreadful pioneer troubles. In return they had the sky, stars, mountains, wildflowers, horses, weather and canyons. They eventually moved to Phoenix when their dream of buying part of the ranch fell apart in the aftermath of WWII. But soon they felt "penned up" and moved to Horse Mesa where Lily again did what she most loved: taught the kids of the 13 families who lived there. Just to get to Horse Mesa meant surviving a road known as Agnes Weeps, named "after the town's first schoolteacher, who had burst into tears when she saw how plunging and twisting the road was and realized how remote the town must be."

It was fine to read about our country...Wallace Stegner country, Ed Abbey country, country not far from where I was born.... in this fond remembrance of a remarkable, spirited woman.