This is not one of our usual adventure/crime novels. Rather, it’s a true-life historical novel about the life of a woman who was born and came of age in the southwestern U.S. at the start of the 20th century. The author, Jeannette Walls, wrote about her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who was born in 1901 in a home dug out of the earth in Salt Draw, West Texas, which is not far from High Lonesome. What was captivating about this book was the graphic detail that Walls brought to this story, the real life story of the hard lives that Lily, her parents, and her siblings lived. Walls brought a believable mix of narrative and dialogue to the reader to tell a very believable story. It went on to capture Lily’s interactions with and thoughts about her fight to have a high school and then college education, becoming a teacher who wanted to be in control of her curriculum, her students and her fights with their parents and communities, the solid man she married, and the children she raised. Having read this book, I feel like I have a better grasp on this era and this region of the U.S. than I’ve had before. The book flowed easily and I read it in a day. Despite this novel being out of our usual genre, it gets my strong recommendation.
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