Beth's Picks October 2010: Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

Summary:
“Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, Jeannette Walls's no-nonsense, resourceful, 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, alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car and fly a plane. And, with her husband, Jim, she ran a vast ranch in Arizona.

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 didn't fit the mold. Rosemary Smith Walls always told Jeannette that she was like her grandmother, and in this true-life novel, Jeannette Walls channels that kindred spirit. Half Broke Horses is Laura Ingalls Wilder for adults, as riveting and dramatic as Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa or Beryl Markham's West with the Night. Destined to become a classic, it will transfix readers everywhere.

Biography
Jeannette Walls was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and grew up in the southwest and Welch, West Virginia. She graduated from Barnard College and was a journalist in New York City for twenty years. Her memoir, The Glass Castle, a triumphant account of overcoming a difficult childhood with her dysfunctional but vibrant family, has been a New York Times bestseller for over three years. A publishing sensation around the world, The Glass Castle has sold more than 2.5 million copies in the U.S. and has been translated into twenty-two languages. Walls is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Christopher Award for helping to "affirm the highest values of the human spirit," as well as the American Library Association's Alex Award, and the Books for Better Living Award. The Glass Castle was chosen as Elle magazine's book of the year. Walls lives in rural Virginia with her husband, the writer John Taylor.

Also:
http://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2006-Ra-Z/Walls-Jeannette.html

Reviews:
Library Journal
Walls is a careful observer who can give true-life stories the rush and immediacy of the best fiction. Here she novelizes the life of her grandmother, giving herself just the latitude she needs to create a great story. Lily Casey Smith is one astonishing woman, tough enough to trot her pony across several hundred miles of desert to her first job when she's only a teenager. After a brief stint in Chicago and marriage to a flim-flam man, she's back in the West, teaching again and eventually remarrying, helping her fine new husband at the gas station, raising her children, and running hootch if she must to make ends meet during the Depression. Her story is at once simple and utterly remarkable, for this is one remarkable woman-a half-broke horse herself who's clearly passed on her best traits to her granddaughter. Verdict Told in a natural, offhand voice that is utterly enthralling, this is essential reading for anyone who loves good fiction-or any work about the American West.

Booklist, a starred review
[A]….gripping tale of her maternal grandmother, the formidable horse-training, poker-playing rancher and teacher Lily Casey Smith. Because she patched the story together from reminiscences, used her imagination to fill in the gaps, and decided to have Lily narrate so we could all experience her sharp-shooter's directness, Walls wisely calls this a novel. Fact, fiction, either way, every tall-tale episode in Lily's rough-and-tumble life is hugely entertaining and provocative, while Walls' prose is as crystal clear and reviving as the water Lily cherishes in the high desert. Flash floods, tornadoes, blizzards, drought, con men, bigots, scum, and fools, unflappable Lily courageously faces them all. And why not? She was the smartest and toughest in her otherwise inept West Texas family. As she travels across the plains--winning rodeos, selling moonshine, marrying her soul mate, raising two kids, running a ranch, and teaching in remote one-room schoolhouses--Lily, proud, uncompromising, pistol-packing, and whip-smart, finds a lesson in every setback and showdown. Walls does her grandmother proud in this historically revealing and triumphant novel of a fearless, progressive woman who will not be corralled.

Kirkus Reviews

To the end Lily is one tough bird. Like her grandmother, Walls knows how to tell a story with love and grit.

USA Today - Craig Wilson

Half Broke Horses [is] the tale of yet another free-spirited wisecracking relative, her maternal grandmother, Lily Casey Smith. Think a rifle-toting, horse-breaking Annie Oakley in a biplane.

The New York Times Book Review - Liesl Schillinger
Wilder's stories have acquired such mythic power…that it can be easy to forget how many American families shared similar histories, each with their own touchstones of calamity, endurance and hard-won reward. With convincing, unprettified narration, Walls weaves her own ancestor into this collective rough-and-tumble heritage. Entertainment Weekly ...an elegant act of literary transubstantiation... a narrative as bold and self-assured as a cowboy's lasso skills.

Jeannette Walls homepage:
http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Jeannette-Walls/19723841
This has a videoclip of her discussing the book.

Jennette Walls on UTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOKkcBPYl5Y

Book Discussion Questions:
http://www.litlovers.com/guide_half_broke_horses.html

Beth’s comments:
Arizona of the twenties and thirties--I loved Lily and did not want the book to end. This is a good companion to Sandra Day O’Connor’s autobiography, Lazy B: growing up on a cattle ranch in the American Southwest

Classic Suggestion October 2010

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Magill Book Review: SENSE AND SENSIBILITY is, as its title suggests, a study of opposites. The novel centers on two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. The first is serene and reasonable, the second impetuous and emotional; but they are devoted to each other and to their mother and younger sister. Since their father's death and their half-brother's succession to the estate, they all have retired to Devonshire.There Marianne meets Willoughby, a charming but amoral gentleman. She falls ecstatically in love. He trifles with her affections, runs off to London, and engages himself to an heiress. Marianne bears her disappointment as befits a representative of sensibility: with tears, swoons, and tragic postures.In the meantime, Elinor has her own share of love and sadness, both of which she handles in a manner markedly different from that of her sister. Elinor admires her sister-in-law's brother Edward Ferrars, a less dashing but more scrupulous man than Willoughby. Ferrars hesitates to voice his love for Elinor because of an imprudent earlier understanding he had formed with a woman of low degree, Lucy Steele. On hearing of his secret pledge, Elinor honorably and unselfishly conceals her feelings until Ferrars' mother discovers his unsuitable promise to Lucy and disinherits him in favor of his younger brother, who then becomes the victim of the fickle and mercenary Lucy.Austen's study of manners and morals ends, as her other novels do, with appropriate marriages rewarding and defining the chief characters. Elinor marries Ferrars, who has obtained a small church living that will support him and a wife of her practical sort. Marianne, who has paid the penalty of her sensibility, also gains a mate. Educated by her suffering, she realizes that Colonel Brandon, a rich, kind man who has long loved her and who has experienced romantic disappointments of his own, is a suitable husband despite his wearing flannel waistcoats and being an "old man" of five and thirty. Source:  Novelist

Book Discussion Guide

Best in Books October 2010

Lost Boy Lost Girl by Peter Straub

October is the perfect time to pick up an award-winning horror story. Lost Boy Lost Girl should help put you in the Halloween mood thanks to a haunted house and its creepy tone. Author, Peter Straub, is known for his horror stories that he has written both solo and with Stephen King. This month's novel has won two horror genre awards in 2003 including the Bram Stoker Best Novel and the now inactive Horror Guild Award Best Novel.

Booklist Review

Once more, Straub employs the scene (Millhaven, Illinois) and the protagonists--'nam-vet novelist Tim Underhill and rich, super-attentive and -intuitive P.I. Tom Pasmore--of his hefty best-sellersoko (1988), Mystery (1989), and The Throat (1993). Relegating Pasmore to the secondary cast and using Tim as both first-person recorder of events and third-person general narrator, Straub explores two appalling tragedies. Tim's sister-in-law, Nancy, an appealing woman whom many pity for marrying ill-tempered Philip Underhill, kills herself for no apparent reason. Mere days later, Philip and Nancy's handsome 15-year-old, Mark, disappears. Since a serial killer has been "disappearing" middle-teen boys from the park in which Mark and his best friend,imbo, hung out nights, the worst is feared. With Pasmore working behind the scenes, Tim sets out to understand his two losses. Mostly, he must getimbo to reveal all that he knows. As he succeeds with the boy, Tim discovers that in the abandoned house across the alley from Philip and Nancy's are the keys to the puzzles of her death, Mark's vanishing, and other mysteries. Much of what Tim learns is hideous, but some of it points to transcendent redemption for Mark and a girl who disappeared long ago in even grislier circumstances. This is the great novel of the supernatural Straub has always had it in him to write, one as beautiful, moving, and spiritually rich as the best stories in his dazzling collections Houses without Doors (1990) and Magic Terror (2000). --Ray Olson Copyright 2003 Booklist

Classic Book Suggestion September 2010

Animal Farm by George Orwell

In honor of Banned Books Week this September, this month's suggested classic is Orwell's Animal Farm.  The American Library Association has a list of some banned classics and the reasons why they were banned or challenged.  Animal Farm is on this list.

As ferociously fresh as it was more than a half century ago, this remarkable allegory of a downtrodden society of overworked, mistreated animals, and their quest to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality is one of the most scathing satires ever published. As we witness the rise and bloody fall of the revolutionary animals, we begin to recognize the seeds of totalitarianism in the most idealistic organization; and in our most charismatic leaders, the souls of our cruelest oppressors. -book jacket


Wikipedia article
Reading Group Guide
Plot Summary

Best in Books September 2010

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Both a 1988 Pulitzer Prize winning book for fiction and the 1999 YALSA (American Library Association's Young Adult Library Services Association) Outstanding Books for the College Bound - Fiction list, Beloved has been challenged to be removed from library shelves and classrooms. Read the stories behind challenges by visiting the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and scroll to "M" for Morrison.

Review
Morrison encapsulates the horror of slavery and the consuming passion of motherhood in a single act of defiance by a runaway slave. The pivotal event occurs when Sethe, the slave, murders her infant daughter rather than permit her recapture. The story of Sethe's violation, her determined escape, and its horrific consequences is slowly played out in memory and gossip, as Morrison hints at the terrible secret in the woman's past--a legacy so dreadful that she has alienated the black community, driven off her two sons, and sent her remaining daughter into her own form of exile. Sethe is haunted not only by her own memories and her neighbors' reactions, but also by the ghostly presence of the murdered girl, who is called simply Beloved and who appears just as her mother, released from prison, seems ready to embark on a normal, loving relationship with a man. Sethe's history, too awful to be narrated in a straightforward, chronological manner, is related in kaleidoscopic fashion, complete with the shatteringly eloquent and accurate dialogue that Morrison has displayed in her earlier fiction, such as Song of Solomon (Booklist 73:1704 Jl 15 74). DPD. [OCLC] 86-46157 --

Novelist Book Discussion Questions

Toni Morrison Society Website information about the author, upcoming events and the work of the society

Beth's Picks for August

PLAIN TRUTH BY JODI PICOULT

SUMMARY

Moving seamlessly from psychological drama to courtroom suspense, Plain Truth is a fascinating portrait of Amish life rarely witnessed by those outside the faith. When a young Amish teen hides a pregnancy, gives birth in secret, and then flatly denies it all when the baby's body is found, urban defense attorney Ellie Hathaway decides to defend her. But she finds herself caught in a clash of cultures with a people whose channels of justice are markedly different from her own… and discovers a place where circumstances are not always what they seem.

AUTHOR WEBSITE

http://www.jodipicoult.com/

INTERVIEW WITH JODI PICOULT

http://www.jodipicoult.com/faqs.html

BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

http://www.jodipicoult.com/plain-truth.html#questions

REVIEWS

"A suspenseful, richly layered drama… From the very start, Picoult draws readers in… impressive… Picoult's seventh novel never loses its grip. The research is convincing, the plotting taut, the scenes wonderfully vivid… [An} absorbing, multidimensional portrait of an Amish clan… a hummer of a tale." —People, (starred review)

"Appealing, suspenseful… Reads like a cross between the Harrison Ford movie Witness and Scott Turow's novel Presumed Innocent, with a dose of television's The Practice thrown in to spice up the legal dilemmas." —Arizona Republic

Ellie Hathaway is a successful but disillusioned defense attorney who needs to get away from the often guilty people she has been defending in court. She flees Philadelphia for Paradise, PA, the small town where she spent idyllic childhood summers. Shortly before Ellie arrives at her aunt's house, a young Amish girl is accused of murdering her newborn son in her parents' barn. Ellie's aunt, who is related to the family, believes that the girl is innocent and asks Ellie to defend her. The judge orders Katie to be released into Ellie's custody, and Ellie reluctantly moves onto the dairy farm that Katie's family operates while she prepares her defense. Picoult (The Pact) offers an interesting look into Amish culture and beliefs and the effect they have on various people. Her courtroom scenes are exciting and realistic, but a surprising twist at the very end just doesn't ring true. Nonetheless, public libraries will want this well-paced story, which focuses on a unique way of life.--Library Journal

YA--Philadelphia defense lawyer Ellie Hathaway retreats to her great Aunt Leda's home in Paradise, PA, to get a break from her high-pressure job. Almost at the same time that she arrives, a dead baby is discovered in the barn of an Amish farmer. A police investigation reveals that the mother is an 18-year-old unmarried Amish girl, Katie Fisher, and that the infant apparently did not die of natural causes. Even in the face of medical proof that she recently gave birth, Katie denies the murder charge. Ellie reluctantly agrees to defend her, even though she does not want to be defended. To better understand her client, Ellie moves into the farmhouse with the Fisher family where she begins to see firsthand the pressures and sacrifices of those who live "plain." As she searches for evidence in this case, she calls upon a friend from her past, Dr. John Cooper, a psychiatrist. As Coop and Ellie work together to unravel fact and fiction, they also work to resolve issues in their relationship. Readers will experience a psychological drama as well as a suspenseful courtroom trial. The contrast between the Amish culture and the "English" provides an interesting tension. This study of opposites details much information about a way of life based on faith, humility, duty, and hon-esty.--School Library Journal

Classic Suggestion August 2010

Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

One of Thomas Hardy's most powerful works, The Return of the Native centers famously on Egdon Heath, the wild, haunted Wessex moor that D. H. Lawrence called "the real stuff of tragedy." The heath's changing face mirrors the fortunes of the farmers, inn-keepers, sons, mothers, and lovers who populate the novel. The "native" is Clym Yeobright, who comes home from a cosmopolitan life in Paris. He; his cousin Thomasin; her fiancé, Damon Wildeve; and the willful Eustacia Vye are the protagonists in a tale of doomed love, passion, alienation, and melancholy as Hardy brilliantly explores that theme so familiar throughout his fiction: the diabolical role of chance in determining the course of a life.