• Complain

Jeannette Walls - Half Broke Horses

Here you can read online Jeannette Walls - Half Broke Horses full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. genre: Prose. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

No cover

Half Broke Horses: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Half Broke Horses" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

A True Life Novel Jeannette Wallss The Glass Castle was nothing short of spectacular (Entertainment Weekly). Now she brings us the story of her grandmother told in a voice so authentic and compelling that the book is destined to become an instant classic. Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did. So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, in Jeannette Wallss magnificent, true-life novel based on her no-nonsense, resourceful, hard working, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. 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, all alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car (I loved cars even more than I loved horses. They didnt need to be fed if they werent working, and they didnt leave big piles of manure all over the place) and fly a plane, and, with her husband, ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom is Jeannettes memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls, unforgettably portrayed in The Glass Castle. Lily survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy. She bristled at prejudice of all kinds against women, Native Americans, and anyone else who didnt fit the mold. Half Broke Horses is Laura Ingalls Wilder for adults, as riveting and dramatic as Isak Dinesens Out of Africa or Beryl Markhams West with the Night. It will transfix readers everywhere.

Jeannette Walls: author's other books


Who wrote Half Broke Horses? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Half Broke Horses — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Half Broke Horses" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
Jeannette Walls Half Broke Horses 2009Lily Casey Smith Ashfork Arizona - photo 1

Jeannette Walls

Half Broke Horses

2009

***

Lily Casey Smith, Ashfork, Arizona, 1934

This book is dedicated

to all teachers,

and especially to

Rose Mary Walls,

Phyllis Owens, and

Esther Fuchs

And in memory of

Jeannette Bivens and

Lily Casey Smith

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MY DEEPEST THANKS TO my mother, Rose Mary Smith Walls. Over hundreds of hours, Mom was unfailingly generous with her stories, memories, and observations, never refusing to answer a question no matter how personal and never trying to restrict or control what I wrote.

Id also like to thank my brother, Brian, and sisters, Lori and Maureen, as well as my extended family, the Taylor clan. My gratitude goes out as well to my aunt Diane Moody and my Smith cousins, especially Shelly Smith Dunlop, who presented me with a trove of photographs that showed people, places, critters, and a time I knew only through words.

Thanks also to Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, who is a good friend even before shes my agent. At Scribner, Nan Graham brought her precision of words and thoughts to my writing, and Kate Bittmans cheer and hard work are a cherished gift, as is the enthusiastic support of Susan Moldow.

For their horse wisdom and horse sense, I also owe a debt to Joe Kincheloe, Dick Bickel, and especially Susan Homan.

I will never be able to adequately thank my husband, John Taylor, who has taught me so much, including when to pull back and when to let go.

It was the great north wind that made the Vikings.

Old Norwegian sayin

I SALT DRAW

The KC Ranch on the Rio Hondo

THOSE OLD COWS KNEW trouble was coming before we did.

It was late on an August afternoon, the air hot and heavy like it usually was in the rainy season. Earlier wed seen some thunderheads near the Burnt Spring Hills, but theyd passed way up to the north. Id mostly finished my chores for the day and was heading down to the pasture with my brother, Buster, and my sister, Helen, to bring the cows in for their milking. But when we got there, those girls were acting all bothered. Instead of milling around at the gate, like they usually did at milking time, they were standing stiff-legged and straight-tailed, twitching their heads around, listening.

Buster and Helen looked up at me, and without a word, I knelt down and pressed my ear to the hard-packed dirt. There was a rumbling, so faint and low that you felt it more than you heard it. Then I knew what the cows knew-a flash flood was coming.

As I stood up, the cows bolted, heading for the southern fence line, and when they reached the barbed wire, they jumped over it-higher and cleaner than Id ever seen cows jump-and then they thundered off toward higher ground.

I figured we best bolt, too, so I grabbed Helen and Buster by the hand. By then I could feel the ground rumbling through my shoes. I saw the first water sluicing through the lowest part of the pasture, and I knew we didnt have time to make it to higher ground ourselves. In the middle of the field was an old cottonwood tree, broad-branched and gnarled, and we ran for that.

Helen stumbled, so Buster grabbed her other hand, and we lifted her off the ground and carried her between us as we ran. When we reached the cottonwood, I pushed Buster up to the lowest branch, and he pulled Helen into the tree behind him. I shimmied up and wrapped my arms around Helen just as a wall of water, about six feet high and pushing rocks and tree limbs in front of it, slammed into the cottonwood, dousing all three of us. The tree shuddered and bent over so far that you could hear wood cracking, and some lower branches were torn off. I feared it might be uprooted, but the cottonwood held fast and so did we, our arms locked as a great rush of caramel-colored water, filled with bits of wood and the occasional matted gopher and tangle of snakes, surged beneath us, spreading out across the lowland and seeking its level.

We just sat there in that cottonwood tree watching for about an hour. The sun started to set over the Burnt Spring Hills, turning the high clouds crimson and sending long purple shadows eastward. The water was still flowing beneath us, and Helen said her arms were getting tired. She was only seven and was afraid she couldnt hold on much longer.

Buster, who was nine, was perched up in the big fork of the tree. I was ten, the oldest, and I took charge, telling Buster to trade places with Helen so she could sit upright without having to cling too hard. A little while later, it got dark, but a bright moon came out and we could see just fine. From time to time we all switched places so no ones arms would wear out. The bark was chafing my thighs, and Helens, too, and when we needed to pee, we had to just wet ourselves. About halfway through the night, Helens voice started getting weak.

I cant hold on any longer, she said.

Yes, you can, I told her. You can because you have to. We were going to make it, I told them. I knew we would make it because I could see it in my mind. I could see us walking up the hill to the house tomorrow morning, and I could see Mom and Dad running out. It would happen-but it was up to us to make it happen.

To keep Helen and Buster from drifting off to sleep and falling out of the cottonwood, I grilled them on their multiplication tables. When wed run through those, I went on to presidents and state capitals, then word definitions, word rhymes, and whatever else I could come up with, snapping at them if their voices faltered, and that was how I kept Helen and Buster awake through the night.

By first light, you could see that the water still covered the ground. In most places, a flash flood drained away after a couple of hours, but the pasture was in bottomland near the river, and sometimes the water remained for days. But it had stopped moving and had begun seeping down through the sinkholes and mudflats.

We made it, I said.

I figured it would be safe to wade through the water, so we scrambled out of the cottonwood tree. We were so stiff from holding on all night that our joints could scarcely move, and the mud kept sucking at our shoes, but we got to dry land as the sun was coming up and climbed the hill to the house just the way I had seen it.

Dad was on the porch, pacing back and forth in that uneven stride he had on account of his gimp leg. When he saw us, he let out a yelp of delight and started hobbling down the steps toward us. Mom came running out of the house. She sank to her knees, clasped her hands in front of her, and started praying up to the heavens, thanking the Lord for delivering her children from the flood.

It was she who had saved us, she declared, by staying up all night praying. You get down on your knees and thank your guardian angel, she said. And you thank me, too.

Helen and Buster got down and started praying with Mom, but I just stood there looking at them. The way I saw it, I was the one whod saved us all, not Mom and not some guardian angel. No one was up in that cottonwood tree except the three of us. Dad came alongside me and put his arm around my shoulders.

There werent no guardian angel, Dad, I said. I started explaining how Id gotten us to the cottonwood tree in time, figuring out how to switch places when our arms got tired and keeping Buster and Helen awake through the long night by quizzing them.

Dad squeezed my shoulder. Well, darling, he said, maybe the angel was you.

WE HAD A HOMESTEAD on Salt Draw, which flowed into the Pecos River, in the rolling gritty grassland of west Texas. The sky was high and pale, the land low and washed out, gray and every color of sand. Sometimes the wind blew for days on end, but sometimes it was so still you could hear the dog barking on the Dingler ranch two miles upriver, and when a wagon came down the road, the dust it trailed hung in the air for a long time before drifting back to the ground.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Half Broke Horses»

Look at similar books to Half Broke Horses. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Half Broke Horses»

Discussion, reviews of the book Half Broke Horses and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.