(1276)Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

This true story of Lily Casey Smith beat my grandma's life experience flat. Yet, my grandma was no shrinking violet.

While I self published a small booklet of "Stories My Grandma Told Me" which included a 7-page biography of the old lady I wrote in college as a term paper, Jeannette did a wonderful job with her book.

Ladies who struck out on their own in the bygone years were people with true grit. Nothing would beat them down. Lily spent her early life ranching and breaking carriage horses in USA, my grandma was a peasant planting rice paddy in Southern China.

Lily's first husband two-timed her. My grandpa died probably of a stroke in his late forties. Lily chose a good man and married for a second time. My grandma single-handedly brought up five children, four biological and one adopted.

Lily left home at fifteen and rode her pony 500 miles to her first job in a frontier town. My grandma left China at age 20 to sail to the then Malaya as a mail order bride. Both women were courageous and go-getters. Lily was born in 1901 in West Texas while grandma was born in 1903 in Canton, South China.

It is amazing to me that women in the east and the west of around the same era could possess the same spirit in striking out into the unknown to lead lives they desired.