"Half Broke Horses"

By Jeannette Walls

Scribner. $26. 272 pages.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- For two decades, Jeannette Walls hid her roots.

When Walls was young, her restless family had lived like nomads, moving from one Southwestern desert town to another and sometimes living in primitive mountain camps. When he was sober, her father, Rex, was brilliant and charming. Unfortunately, that wasn't often. Her mother, Rose Mary, spent her time painting, with little or no time left over for such mundane matters as cooking dinner.

Later, when the money ran out, the madcap Walls clan moved to West Virginia, where Rex had been born and still had family.

Thus it was that Walls spent her teenage years in Welch, growing up in a shack with no running water, no electricity and often no food on the table. As her father sank deeper into alcoholism, he would steal the family's grocery money and disappear for days at a time. Meanwhile, her mother retreated more into her dreams. As the dysfunction of her family escalated, Walls knew she had to get away.

And leave she did. Against all odds, she made her way to New York and managed to graduate from prestigious Barnard College, working at a long list of jobs to support herself and to pay her tuition. Those jobs included writing well-received pieces for various newspapers and magazines.

Before long she found herself with a successful career in the world of celebrity news and gossip. Her first book, "Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip," published in 2000, traced the history of celebrity journalism from the early days of Confidential magazine to the current era.

Then came a pivotal moment for her. She was in a New York taxicab on her way to a fancy party. When the traffic brought the taxi to a halt, she spotted a ragged woman sorting through the items in a nearby dumpster. To others, the woman no doubt looked like any of the thousands of homeless people in New York. But Walls recognized the woman -- it was her mother.

"Half Broke Horses"

By Jeannette Walls

Scribner. $26. 272 pages.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- For two decades, Jeannette Walls hid her roots.

When Walls was young, her restless family had lived like nomads, moving from one Southwestern desert town to another and sometimes living in primitive mountain camps. When he was sober, her father, Rex, was brilliant and charming. Unfortunately, that wasn't often. Her mother, Rose Mary, spent her time painting, with little or no time left over for such mundane matters as cooking dinner.

Later, when the money ran out, the madcap Walls clan moved to West Virginia, where Rex had been born and still had family.

Thus it was that Walls spent her teenage years in Welch, growing up in a shack with no running water, no electricity and often no food on the table. As her father sank deeper into alcoholism, he would steal the family's grocery money and disappear for days at a time. Meanwhile, her mother retreated more into her dreams. As the dysfunction of her family escalated, Walls knew she had to get away.

And leave she did. Against all odds, she made her way to New York and managed to graduate from prestigious Barnard College, working at a long list of jobs to support herself and to pay her tuition. Those jobs included writing well-received pieces for various newspapers and magazines.

Before long she found herself with a successful career in the world of celebrity news and gossip. Her first book, "Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip," published in 2000, traced the history of celebrity journalism from the early days of Confidential magazine to the current era.

Then came a pivotal moment for her. She was in a New York taxicab on her way to a fancy party. When the traffic brought the taxi to a halt, she spotted a ragged woman sorting through the items in a nearby dumpster. To others, the woman no doubt looked like any of the thousands of homeless people in New York. But Walls recognized the woman -- it was her mother.

"It had been months since I laid eyes on Mom," she says. "And when she looked up, I was overcome with panic that she'd see me and call out my name, and that someone on the way to the same party would spot us together and Mom would introduce herself and my secret would be out."

Slinking down in her seat, she directed the driver to take her home. Once there, she couldn't get her mother out of her mind. A telephone call to a mutual friend brought a meeting with her mother a few days later -- and sparked a resolve to tell the story of her family, warts and all.

The compelling result was "The Glass Castle," a memoir that proved to be a 2005 best-seller. The reviews were glowing. Among those who embraced the book was Dominick Dunne, the late celebrity journalist, who called it "funny and sad and quirky and loving." Countless enthusiastic readers eagerly agreed and recommended the book to their friends and family. "I couldn't put it down" was a phrase repeated time and time again. The book has sold 2.5 million copies and been translated into two dozen languages.

That kind of reception for a book is hard to duplicate, and it remains to be seen if her new book meets with that kind of spectacular success. But readers who loved "The Glass Castle" will be happy to learn that her "Half Broke Horses" is cut from the same bolt of cloth as her earlier memoir.

Again Walls has turned to her family for inspiration. This time, she writes about her tough-as-nails grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who lived through droughts, flash floods, tornadoes and the Great Depression.

Lily was born in 1901 in a West Texas dugout -- "more or less a big hole on the side of the riverbank." By age 6, she was helping her father break horses. (Hence the book's title.) At 15, she left home to teach school in a frontier town, riding 500 miles on her pony, alone, to get to her job. "Spunky" seems an inadequate word to describe her.

As a young woman, she traveled to Chicago, found work, fell in love -- and then discovered her new husband already had a wife and children. So, it was back to the Southwest. Fascinated by the first airplane she saw, she learned to fly. With her second husband, Jim, she ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom would be Jeannette Walls' mother.

In an author's note, Walls says she first intended to write about her mother's girlhood. "But as I talked to Mom about those years, she kept insisting that her mother was the one who had led the truly interesting life and that the book should be about Lily."

Ultimately, Walls agreed. At the same time, she made an important decision. She decided to write her grandmother's story in the first person "because I wanted to capture Lily's distinctive voice." That meant, however, that Walls would have to invent page after page of dialogue and supply countless details that were hazy or missing. Thus, the dust jacket for "Half Broke Horses" identifies it as "A True Life Novel." which places it somewhere between nonfiction and fiction.

A few readers may find that disconcerting. When they read a passage they may find themselves wondering if the events described actually happened or if they sprang from Jeannette Walls' imagination. But most readers -- especially those who've already enjoyed "The Glass Castle" -- will simply enjoy meeting the indomitable Lily Casey Smith.

James E. Casto of Huntington is a retired newspaper editor and the author of a number of books on state and local history.