Overview

An alternative prison ranch in New Mexico conducts a daring experiment: setting the troubled residents out to retrain an aggressive herd of horses. The horses and prisoners both arrive at the ranch broken in one way or many—the horses often abandoned and suspicious, the residents, some battling drug and alcohol addiction, emotionally, physically, and financially shattered. Ginger Gaffney's job is to retrain the untrainable. With time, the horses and residents form a profound bond, and teach each other patience, control, and trust. As Gaffney peels away the layers of her own story—a solitary childhood, painful introversion, and a transformative connection with her first horse, a filly named Belle—she, too, learns to trust people as much as she trusts horses. Half Broke is a resonant memoir with a spirited, memorable cast that describes the fascinating ways both horses and humans seek relationships to survive.

Full Product Details

9781324003076

Table of Contents

Reviews

Ginger Gaffney is a bold and original talent. This poignant, positive story of human and equine transformation subtly combines the author's own healing with the challenge of teaching difficult people to work with deeply scared horses. The characters leap off the page and into your heart. Savor this book, and then buy a copy for your best friend. -- Anne Hillerman, New York Times best-selling author of the Leaphorn, Chee, and Manuelito novels Half Broke is a love song to the broken ones, be they human or beast, and all the ways they find to mend. Ginger Gaffney's prose is as clean and lovely as the land she describes, and this story is one that hinges on some of the deepest truths. Among them the fact that loving well is the best medicine, and though we may not recover in a way that preserves the person we were, such loss is not without mercy. -- Melissa Febos, author of Whip Smart and Abandon Me Written with clarity and compassion, Half Broke is about the astounding power?of horses to heal broken human beings. It shows a side of New Mexico that is seldom seen-the poverty and the struggle, but also the hopefulness and odd beauty of spirit within the people and the horses. -- Leslie Marmon Silko, author of Ceremony Ginger Gaffney writes the intricacies of the equine-human relationship as well as I have ever seen it written...She knows a horse's mind as well as she knows her own. You will remember the tenacious and utterly winning people that populate Half Broke for a long, long time, and you will never forget the horses. -- Pam Houston, author of Deep Creek

Author Information

Ginger Gaffney is a top-ranked horse trainer. She received an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, and her work has been published in Tin House and Utne Reader. She lives in Velarde, New Mexico.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available