Description

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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.

About the Author

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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.

Praise For…

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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