Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls.✔✔✔

This second book by Jeannette Walls - the first was the brutally vivid story of a dysfunctional family, The Glass Castle - tells the story of Lily Casey Smith, Jeannette's grandmother and mother of Rosemary, the leftover hippie mother of Jeannette. Lily was raised on a very rudimentary ranch in Arizona, learned to break horses at the age of six, left home at age 15 to travel 500 miles on a horse to become a schoolteacher in a small frontier town,learned to drive a car and fly a plane, and even sold bootleg whiskey for a time to support her family. With her husband Jim, she ran a huge ranch in Arizona, then later moved to Phoenix for a short time - her description of city-living and coping for a woman who was used to wide open spaces, freedom and silence was quite revealing. She was ahead of her times in many ways - hated prejudice of all kinds, and voiced her opinions clearly and freely.
Jeannette's grandmother died when Jeannette was 8 years old, and Jeannette had wanted to write about her mother, but Rosemary convinced her that Lily's story was far more interesting. She wrote the book in the form of an oral history, and calls it a "true-life novel". Fascinating - what a strong woman!