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1-Page Summary of Half Broke Horses

Overview

“Half Broke Horses” is a novel that claims to be true. The main setting of “Half Broke Horses” is in Texas, where the Casey family lives on High Lonesome. Lily describes the property: “When you looked out across the land, most everything you could see – the horizon, the river, the fence lines, and gullies – was spread out and flat. People moved slowly across it.” (Part 1).

The Caseys own 160 acres in west Texas, land used to raise carriage horses. The land is known as the Salt Draw, resting alongside the Pecos River. The region has tornados and flash floods. Lily recounts one of those floods when she was a child and nearly lost her life along with Buster, Helen, and herself.

The main character in the story is Lily Casey Smith. She was born in 1901 and quickly became her father’s right hand when it came to training horses and dealing with the public. Her father, Adam Casey, had a speech impediment due to an injury he suffered at age three that left him with slurred speech. Therefore, it was up to his daughter Lily to be his voice in public.

Lily was very active from a young age. She took care of her siblings, broke horses, trained horses and did all the chores on the farm. Lily would earn a teaching position without proper certification and move to Chicago where she married a bigamist who promptly left her. Lily learned how to drive a car, fly an airplane and live independently in Montana on her own ranch.

Lily’s life was filled with many opportunities and challenges. She often used them as an opportunity to grow, learn, and move forward. She had several teaching jobs before she was certified. Lily also had run-ins with a few different people – some who were trying to assert their manliness while others didn’t understand or appreciate her outspoken ways. Lily got fired from these jobs quite often.

After Lily’s younger sister died, she decided to get married and have children of her own. She met Big Jim Smith, a mechanic who was almost 20 years older than her. They got married and had two kids: Rosemary and Little Jim. Both of them were wild but Rosemary vexed her mother on a daily basis by getting thrown out of school for not learning or accepting punishment or discipline despite protestations from Lily.

Throughout their relationship, the Smith family remained strong and supported each other through hard times. They went through droughts, floods, and blizzards together. In the end, they stayed together without compromising on anything.

The author, Jeannette Walls, decided to write a book about her grandmother after learning more about her.

Section 0 Summary (Part 1)

Part 1, “Salt Draw,” began with a flash flood that plagued High Lonesome, the home of the Casey family. The main character, Lily Casey Smith was 10 years old when this happened. She had two younger siblings: Buster who was 9 and Helen who was 7. They were all outside when it started to rain really hard. There wasn’t much warning before the flood hit so they managed to get their animals out of harm’s way (Part 1).

Lily, Buster and Helen are forced to take shelter in a cottonwood tree when the flood comes. Lily uses all of her tricks to keep Buster and Helen awake so that they don’t fall out of the tree. She finally gets them down at dawn, but she thinks that she’s been saved by an angel.

Lily said, “My father exclaimed. I started explaining how we got to the cottonwood tree in time and how I helped us get there by switching places with my brother when our arms got tired and keeping Helen awake during the night by quizzing her.” Lily’s father said that maybe Lily was really their guardian angel because she had a lot of responsibilities on the ranch including collecting eggs, helping her mother with chores, supervising her siblings, and training horses. Her mother often objected but Lily’s father shot down those objections because he needed help on the ranch.