Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

Walls first memoir shared her childhood in an eccentric somewhat dysfunctional family. This is the life of her maternal grandmother and what a life. Her story begins in the branches of a cottonwood tree, saving her younger brother and sister from a flash flood and the excitement hardly slows down from there. She is eight when she becomes a gifted breaker of horses and by fifteen is the teacher in a one room school. She is independent, fearless, and a saver of S&H green stamps. Once married to a bigamist, she finally finds a love based on mutual respect. An outstanding teacher most of her life, she cannot keep her daughter from making the questionable decision to marry the man who would create a life inside The Glass Castle. Walls has captured perfectly the voice of her grandmother but because it is all second hand, she calls this a true-life novel. Surely this is the memoir her grandmother would have loved to write if her busy exciting life had provided the opportunity.