Half Broke Horses

The first thing the Smiths do when they arrive in Phoenix is get new teeth. They have never seen a dentist before their arrival in Phoenix, so their teeth are in poor shape. The Smiths are proud of their new teeth and show off their dentures any time they can. After their new teeth, they purchase a house and a new sedan, a maroon-colored Kaiser. Lily loves the fact that she can walk to the movies and to a cafeteria-style restaurant. Even though Lily seems to appreciate the technology available in the city, Rosemary and Little Jim do not adapt as well to life there. While Lily takes flying lessons and finds a teaching job, she also begins to see that city life is not all that she thought it would be. This is especially apparent during bomb drills and when she finds out that criminals are terrorizing the area.

Life in Phoenix is difficult for the family. Rosemary becomes distraught. She is only happy when she is painting, but her mother and father are not very supportive of her desire to pursue art, although they do pay for art lessons with a French artist that Lily calls a Frog.

Even though she is living in a city, Lily cannot leave her ranch ways behind her. One day, a colleague notices Lily’s gun when she opens her purse. That same day, her principal stops by and tells her to leave the gun at home. Lily finds it difficult to abide by the strict rules of the Phoenix Public Schools and Jim finds it difficult to work in a warehouse, where he was sitting for most of the day. Strangely, their first winter in Phoenix is a snowy one and it creates an emergency situation in most of Arizona. Despite the harshness of the weather, it is life-changing for Jim and Lily.

The Arizona Department of Agriculture call on Jim to help them save the cattle that are dying on ranches all over the state, due to the freezing temperatures. Jim spends two weeks away from Lily helping ranchers--including those at the Showtime Ranch--save their cattle.

When Jim returns home, he becomes a local celebrity and one of his female colleagues begins to take a romantic interest in him. As a result, Lily starts to doubt Jim’s fidelity, so she enlists Rosemary’s help to spy on him. The first day they spy on him during his lunch hour, but find him eating lunch alone in the park. The second day, Jim spots Rosemary, who takes him back to Lily. This awkward episode ends with the three of them going out to lunch together and Jim professes his fidelity. The stress of life in Phoenix has become too much, however, and the family decide to move away from the city.

The Smiths move to a tiny town called Horse Mesa. The winding road to the mesa takes them past the spectacular scenery of a road called Agnes Weeps. The road was named after the town’s first schoolteacher who cried when she saw how remote Horse Mesa was. The town might not have been Agnes’s first choice, but Lily and Jim find contentment there, with Lily working in the one-room school and Jim finding work filling potholes and maintaining the Apache Trail. While living in Horse Mesa, Lily gets involved in politics, helping her neighbors cast their votes. She and Jim also begin hunting for uranium. The children both finish school and attend Arizona State University. Little Jim plays football until he meets a woman, falls in love and gets married; he finds work as a police officer. Rosemary studies art, but Lily advises her to get a teaching degree too.

During Rosemary’s third year at Arizona State, she meets an Air Force pilot named Rex Walls. While Rosemary is smitten with him, Lily has her doubts about him. Lily thinks he is a “polecat”, like her first husband, and that he is just using Rosemary. He has grand schemes and he seems just as flighty as Rosemary. Lily wants her daughter to find a man who will be her rock, not one who would encourage her wandering behavior. No matter what Lily thinks, Rex is always ready for an adventure. He shows up one day ready to ride a horse, even though he has never done it before. He even takes Lily for a ride in an Air Force plane, despite the fact that citizens were not allowed in them. He also plays a game of poker with Lily. Rosemary and Rex do eventually get married. While Lily fells like she has failed Rosemary, Jim tells her, “Don’t beat yourself up...She might not have turned out like you planned, but that don’t mean she turned out wrong...You got to recognize what’s in her nature and accept it.”

Lily offers to pay for the wedding on the condition that they hold it in a Catholic church, which they agree to. Rosemary wears a beautiful dress and Lily invites everyone she knows. The newlyweds choose an unconventional honeymoon: they simply decided to drive around and see where they end up. As the book ends, the happy couple laughs together as they drive off into the late afternoon Arizona sun, while Lily and Jim watch them leave.

In the Epilogue, Lily tells the reader what happened to her family after Rosemary’s wedding. She and Jim continued to live on Horse Mesa working together with their neighbors to enjoy their lovely surroundings. Little Jim and his wife Diane had a stable life in Phoenix with their children. Rosemary fulfilled the midwife’s prophecy, as she and Rex wandered around Arizona doing odd jobs and trying out their various schemes. Rosemary’s first three babies were girls; the second one died in her crib and the third one was named Jeannette (and happens to be the author of this book). Lily paid the hospital bill for Jeannette’s birth and she developed a special relationship with her young granddaughter. Lily ends her story by promising that she would hover around because she “had a few thing to teach those kids, and there wasn’t a soul alive who could stop me.”