Half Broke: A Memoir

by Ginger Gaffney

Overview

Winner of a 2020 Border Regional Library Association Southwest Book Award

“Truly transcendent.” —Jessica Lustig, New York Times Book Review

This riveting memoir follows professional horse trainer Ginger Gaffney’s year-long odyssey to train a herd of neglected horses at an alternative prison ranch in New Mexico. Working with her is a small team of ranch “residents,” men and women who are each uniquely broken by addiction and incarceration. Gaffney forms a bond with them as profound as the kinship and trust the residents discover among the troubled horses. Through these unforgettable characters—both animal and human—Half Broke tells a new kind of recovery story and speaks to the life-affirming joy of finding a sense of belonging.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393541540
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/09/2021
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 5.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Authors Note xi

Prologue 1

Emotional Camouflage 5

Stray Dogs 15

Moon and Star 27

Skinless 44

Learning to Walk 62

Strength 79

Green Acres 93

Centaur 104

She's Not Ready 119

Crooked Line 139

Cut Me Out 157

Walmart 165

Hundreds More 174

Olivia 177

Hidden Language 184

Broken 187

Rootbeer 198

Follow Me 204

To the River 210

Just a Few 218

Waves 226

Belle 234

Soft Creatures 240

Acknowledgments 245

Editorial Reviews

"You will remember [these] tenacious and utterly winning people… for a long, long time, and you will never forget the horses."— Pam Houston, author of Deep Creek

"[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."— Leslie Marmon Silko, author of Ceremony

"Half Broke—with its painful candor and spare, incisive prose—is captivating."— Michael Upchurch Seattle Times

"Fascinating.… Some of the most compelling characters here don’t speak in words: They are horses. And in Gaffney’s story, they come alive."— Deborah Hopkinson BookPage

"With sensitive, soul-bearing prose, Gaffney weaves together her personal experiences as a horse trainer with the struggles of damaged humans and damaged horses. I was also moved by the depth of vulnerability and intuition of the horses. As Lorin Lindner’s Birds of a Feather reveals for traumatized parrots and soldiers, so Half Broke reveals for horses and parolees."— Jonathan Balcombe, author of What a Fish Knows

"Ginger Gaffney is a bold and original talent.… Savor this book, and then buy a copy for your best friend."— Anne Hillerman, New York Times best-selling author

"Gaffney pulls off the impressive feat of translating horses and humans. She creates lyricism through experience, landscape, and empathy."— Gretchen Lida Washington Independent Review of Books

"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 seventy-seven years on the planet."— Abigail Thomas, author of What Comes Next and How to Like It

"Half Broke is the rare gift of a story exquisitely told, a book that shows us how to save ourselves by saving what we’ve left behind."— Nickole Brown, author of To Those Who Were Our First Gods

"Heartfelt and healing, Half Broke asks us to look at horses and ourselves in a new way. A very moving book for all animal lovers from a true horse whisperer."— Brenda Peterson, author of Wolf Nation: The Life, Death, and Return of Wild American Wolves

From the Publisher

Gaffney has a breathtaking and at times nearly otherworldly ability to read horses by closely studying their bodies, and then to capture what she sees with her prose…Perhaps even more remarkable is that she also can see the humans through the horses' eyes…

The New York Times Book Review - Jessica Lustig

2019-10-23
An engaging debut memoir about the rehabilitation of damaged horses—and humans.

The Delancey Street Foundation's New Mexico ranch is an alternative prison facility where drug offenders can serve out their sentences. Gaffney, a horse trainer and riding instructor, has volunteered at the ranch since 2013. It initially presented "the most dangerous horse situation I had ever encountered," she recalls: The herd had gone feral, raiding dumpsters and threatening their keepers. Two mares, including Luna, who had an infected facial injury, were still on the loose. The author believed that livestock team members like Tony, an ex-junkie with anger issues, and Sarah, a former addict and prostitute who'd survived multiple near-fatal attacks, were "unknowingly communicating their pain to the horses." Gaffney's first task, then, was to teach the inmates to walk with confidence. Horses "keep us present, keen, concentrating," she writes. They help Randy conquer his fears and Eliza snap out of her depression. Former addictions remain strong temptations for these residents, though. In a major setback, Gaffney found a stash of drugs and condoms under the barn floorboards, and most of the livestock team got kicked off the ranch. Sharp descriptions bring the book's human and equine characters to life while present-tense narration animates vivid vignettes: rescuing one horse from a septic field and training another in a 100-day Santa Fe Horse Shelter competition. The book shifts easily between the ranch storyline and the author's history of extreme introversion and fraught lesbian relationships. The first horse she owned, high-strung Belle, "hinged the broken parts of me back together," as did her long-term partner, Glenda. This 1990s-set strand feels less essential, but it helps build a solid trajectory of recovery as Gaffney, like the ranch's residents and horses, changes "into a softer creature…one who can finally trust others and feel like she belongs."

A heartening story of healing and interspecies connection.

Kirkus Reviews