Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Memoirs

HALF BROKE

Ginger Gaffney

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 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 - 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.

Ginger Gaffney is a top-ranked horse trainer. She received an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. She lives in Velarde, New Mexico.

Available products
Book Published 2020-02-04 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. - New York (USA)
Book Published 2020-02-04 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. - New York (USA)

Comments

"Half Broke asks us to look at horses and ourselves in a new way. Gaffney's vivid and engaging stories of 'teaching horses how to feel comfortable in the world of humans' inspires us, like the author, to 'love their world more.' A very moving book for all animal lovers from a true horse whisperer."

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 facts 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.

This book astonished, excited, enlightened, and humbled me. 1 loved it, loved it, loved it. At its heart, Half Broke is about the myriad conscious and unconscious ways we communicate with one other, and with creatures of different species--language both spoken and wordless. This marvelous memoir, peopled with folks in serious trouble of one kind or another, and the horses they care for, creatures with their own sophisticated ways of communicating, taught me as much about language as have my 77 years on the planet. Hard earned wisdom, the best kind.

From its first page, "Half Broke" grabs your attention ... [The book's] biggest revelations come with Gaffney's canny readings of human body language, equine body language and the place where, with patience and heightened intuition, those languages meet and interact, "[o]ne animal to another." Read more...

There is a raw physicality in each scene featuring a horse ... each character is portrayed with humanity and a deep complexity ... Read more...

...in the pages of Half Broke is the rare gift of story exquisitely told, a book that shows us how to save ourselves by saving what we've left behind...

A gift for documenting infinitesimal gradations of fear, anger or sheer sensory joy animates Gaffney's scenes of the interactions of the residents and the horses ... Read more...

Ginger Gaffney is a writer's writer, 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 one for your best friend.

"With exciting showdowns and poignant moments, Half Broke finds freedom in self-control."

You will remember these tenacious and utterly winning people for a long, long time, and you will never forget the horses.

Written with clarity and compassion, this memoir is about the astounding power of horses to heal broken human beings. HALF BROKE 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.

"Believing 'horses mirror their owners,' Gaffney realizes that the residents have been 'beaten down by poverty... by the prison system' and are 'unknowingly communicating their pain to the horses.' She begins with basics, telling the residents that, 'If you want these horses to respect you, you have to respect yourself.'" Read more...

"An engaging debut memoir about the rehabilitation of damaged horses - and humans. A heartening story of healing and interspecies connection." Read more...