The New York Times Book Review - Jessica Lustig
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…
Pam Houston
"You will remember [these] tenacious and utterly winning people… for a long, long time, and you will never forget the horses."
Seattle Times - Michael Upchurch
"Half Broke—with its painful candor and spare, incisive prose—is captivating."
BookPage - Deborah Hopkinson
"Fascinating.… Some of the most compelling characters here don’t speak in words: They are horses. And in Gaffney’s story, they come alive."
Abigail Thomas
"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."
Washington Independent Review of Books - Gretchen Lida
"Gaffney pulls off the impressive feat of translating horses and humans. She creates lyricism through experience, landscape, and empathy."
Jonathan Balcombe
"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."
Nickole Brown
"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."
Anne Hillerman
"Ginger Gaffney is a bold and original talent.… Savor this book, and then buy a copy for your best friend."
Brenda Peterson
"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."
Leslie Marmon Silko
"[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."
Kirkus Reviews
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.
