What a character!

Jeannette Walls's novel The Glass Castle, about her erratic mother, spent three years on The New York Times bestseller list. Her second novel, Half Broke Horses, tells the story of Walls's no-nonsense, resourceful, and spectacularly compelling grandmother, Lily Casey Smith. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town - riding five hundred miles on her pony to get there. She learned to drive a car, fly a plane, and, with her husband, managed a vast ranch in Arizona. Lily survived tornadoes, droughts, floods and the Great Depression but never lost her spunk or spirit. A truly amazing and eye-opening look at a hard life well lived. KR