While I was in Palm Springs, I read Half Broke Horses, by Jeannette Walls.

Ms. Walls also penned The Glass Castle which is a fantastic read; I recommend it often.
This book, while not a sequel by any means (Glass Castle is the author’s autobiography) is the story of the author’s grandmother’s life. I say “story” because I’m not anywhere near certain that it contains facts, which is the case in most biographies anyway. 😉

Walls writes her grandmother’s life story with an admiration of the American Southwest and its beautiful but harsh landscape, which I loved to read about. Times are rough-and-tumble, and Lily, our heroine, is up to the challenge. At first I really loved her pluck and determination. After a while, I started to think that she really thought a bit too highly of herself, and that her stubbornness was less than endearing… One problem I knew I’d have going in is that Lily is the mother of the awful Rosemary who “raised” Jeannette (the author). In reading  The Glass Castle, you come to hate Rosemary, and while I was admiring Lily’s courage, I found myself wondering how she would someday go so wrong with her daughter. Lily (in Jeannette’s words) does try to explain her shortcomings where Rosemary is concerned, but mostly I felt it was a cop-out. That’s when I started to think that Lily was a lot of talk and less action, and her character seemed more stubborn than courageous.

Aside from my criticism of the narrator’s personality, the book is an inviting, addictive read. It’s so fascinating to get a taste of the Southwest at the end of its most interesting era. She also ventures to Chicago in the height of industrialization, and it’s so interesting to travel back with her. Ms. Walls does an incredible job of setting each scene with painstaking precision, so that you can picture it perfectly as you read the story. It’s a very American tale of rags-to-riches (and back to rags, and back to riches, perhaps) and reads easily. Not as great as Castle, but I didn’t expect the author to capture the life of a woman she hardly knew as adeptly as her own, and I’m fine with that.