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Half broke horses
390 pages
A dusty, unsentimental ride alongside a fiercely independent woman carving her own path through the American Southwest.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like sitting on a porch in the high desert, listening to a tough, no-nonsense grandmother spin yarns about a life that would have broken anyone else. The narrative moves at a brisk, purposeful clip, mirroring its protagonist's refusal to dwell on hardship or wallow in self-pity. Walls captures the sun-baked, dusty atmosphere of the early twentieth-century Southwest with unadorned, colloquial prose that crackles with grit and wry humor. It is an unsentimental but deeply affectionate portrait of frontier survival and female independence. Readers who gravitate toward stories of fiercely resilient women and the rugged, unforgiving beauty of the American West will find themselves completely absorbed by this sweeping, true-to-life family epic.
- Mood
- dusty
- sun-baked
- rugged
- expansive
- nostalgic
- Tone
- matter-of-fact
- unsentimental
- resilient
- wry
- gritty
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- frontier survival · female independence · family legacy · taming the untamable · hardscrabble resilience
- The writing
- Unadorned, colloquial, and sharply observant, mimicking the oral storytelling of a tough-as-nails pioneer woman.
- The arc
- Moves from a scrappy, survival-focused childhood to a fiercely independent and deeply grounded matriarchal legacy.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love strong, unapologetic female protagonists and vivid, unsentimental portraits of the American West.
Content notes
- animal death
- domestic abuse
- childhood trauma
- natural disasters
About the book
It is 1970 in a small town in California. "Bean" Holladay is twelve and her sister, Liz, is fifteen when their artistic mother, Charlotte, takes off to find herself, leaving her girls enough money to last a month or two. When Bean returns from school one day and sees a police car outside the house, she and Liz decide to take the bus to Virginia, where their widowed Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying mansion that's been in Charlotte's family for generations... An impetuous optimist, Bean soon discovers who her father was, and hears stories about why their mother left Virginia in the first place. Money is tight, and the sisters start babysitting and doing office work for Jerry Maddox, foreman of the mill in town, who bullies his workers, his tenants, his children, and his wife. Liz is whip-smart--an inventor of word games, reader of Edgar Allan Poe, nonconformist. But when school starts in the fall, it's Bean who easily adjusts, and Liz who becomes increasingly withdrawn. And then something happens to Liz in the car with Maddox.
Description from Open Library.
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