Will I love Half Broke?

This book seemed completely honest to me. We have an extraordinary woman who fights for an education and a job in a time and place where women weren't afforded such things. But she is not a perfect character -- I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be one of her children. Still, she is mighty and I admired her bravery.

I tend to flee from memoirs and “horse story” books. Then I read Half Broke by Ginger Gaffney.

Ginger is a schooled writer, horse trainer, clinician, rider-trainer and, in my opinion, a master observer. She was asked to help the tooth-bearing, ear-pinning, predatory gang of horses tended by the Livestock Team of resident “multiple offenders and felons” at an alternative-prison ranch in New Mexico. As a memoir, Half Broke is a “peeling off” of emotional bandages—for her, for the raw souls of the inmates and for the horses.

Ginger’s style is straightforward, non-judgmental, and thought challenging. No gooey anthropomorphizing.