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Broken Horses

Brandi carlile.

336 pages, Hardcover

First published April 6, 2021

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Audio book source: Libby (library) Story Rating: 4 stars Narrators: Brandi Carlile Narration Rating: 5 stars Genre: Nonfiction/Memoir Length: 10h 3m

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Brandi Carlile Recounts a Life Spurred by Adventure, Advocacy and Virtuosity in ‘Broken Horses’: Book Review

Carlile's memoir is the best-written, most engaging rock autobiography since her childhood hero, Elton John, published "Me."

By Chris Willman

Chris Willman

Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic

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Brandi Carlile has worshipped Elton John all of her adult and adolescent life, so it’s fitting that as she started writing her memoir, “Broken Horses,” she’d just finished reading his 2019 autobiography, “Me.” With Sir Elton and Bernie Taupin likely having the biggest historic impact on her songwriting, it might not be a leap to imagine that the cheeky humor and conversational style of “Me” had at least a slight influence on the wry laugh lines that pop up with just a little less regularity in her tome, too. Not that her humor is going to be quite as determinedly wicked as his: Carlile mentions in the acknowledgments that the one piece of advice from John she ever turned down was that she should title her book “Rug Muncher.”

But “Me” isn’t a title that would have exactly worked for her memoir, either. Although she owns up to her narcissistic tendencies, as could probably anyone driven to put in the work to reach the level of fame she has, she’s always been natively a practitioner and proponent of what she calls “debilitating empathy.” Maybe she was born an empath, or maybe she became one after coming out of a near-death experience when she was a child, almost fatally stricken with meningitis; focusing on the different experiences or reactions of her adult family members instead of herself as she lay on her hospital bed, she had what she calls an acute “awakening to life’s subtle power structures.” Whatever brought it on, Carlile is that rare pop or rock star gifted with complete self-consciousness and confidence but also the soulful clairvoyance to read a room… even a really, really big, global room. It’s surely no accident in the serendipitous scheme of things that her biggest song to date — the one that woke up the world when she sang it on the Grammys in 2019 — was “The Joke,” a tune that weaves together verses about suffering or insecure people ranging from frightened immigrants to facing torment over sexual identity issues. It was a heart-tugging moment that cemented her status as an “us” gal, even more than It Girl.

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You see that empathy come into play for a fleeting but telling moment in what may be her book’s most dramatic story: the would-be baptism. As a Jesus-loving Baptist teenager in rural Washington who happened to be out of the closet before she hit 16, Carlile got quite a surprise when she showed up at church for her dunking only to have the youth pastor inform her, with the ceremony about to get underway, that the show could not go on if she didn’t renounce homosexuality on the spot. It’s not that teen Brandi didn’t feel rightly pissed as she headed home in her would-be baptismal swimsuit. But one of her other instincts was to feel at least a modicum of pity for Pastor Steve, who she figured knew better and might’ve even wanted to do better, but was committed to playing out his evangelical societal role. By the way, she forgives him.

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At a time when the term “role model” is invoked in popular music only as a naive, even ridiculous ideal, Carlile is, well, kind of that, whether she’s devoting herself to charitable efforts for refugees and other human rights work through the War Child charity; taking up the cause of supporting women both as newcomers (the Secret Sisters) and not-so-newbies (Tanya Tucker); or providing a public template for what gay marriage and parenting can look like to a populace that’s still adjusting to these things, with hesitancies along the way about whether she could live up to that responsibility. But playing up the high-minded (or Highwoman-minded) aspects of her life and career risks undercutting what a fun and sometimes irreverent read “Broken Horses” is. As a prose writer, Carlile has an ongoing playfulness that emanates naturally from a life that always has seemed full of play, whatever emotional traumas she might have been going through. Describing growing up as a more-or-less redneck kid in the sticks of Washington state, she invokes “The Goonies” as a touchstone for how she felt exploring the woods with her young siblings and pals, and that spirit of delight in exploration seems never to have gone away, whether she’s forming alt-country supergroups as a sideline or fronting the remnants of Soundgarden for a howling rock ‘n’ roll night. Reading the book is a little like watching a rambunctious Mark Twain juvie grow up into a sensitive but still spirited singer-songwriter, and one of our best, finding adult mischief in deeply mature musicality.

There’s a chapter you might expect to arrive that never does: the one where the heroine realizes she’s gay and then struggles mightily with how to come out to family and friends. Realization and acceptance of her sexual identity came so naturally and early for Carlile that she didn’t really have any heart-stoppingly dramatic moment of courage and catharsis, although she does say that watching and rewinding the “Ellen” coming-out episode in 1997 provided a moment of clarity along the path. Painful coming-out tales have their place for young LGBTQ readers, but so probably will this example of someone who actually felt comfortable in her own skin in those potentially traumatic adolescent moments… at least relatively comfortable for someone who could say she was, “simply put, the only gay person I had ever met,” and be surprisingly OK with that in the moment.

Carlile’s weaknesses come more in the form of micro-insecurities about herself as an artist, but from her Pike Place busking days forward, she’s not one to take indifference for an answer… and with that voice (and eventually writing ability), she didn’t often have to. But she’s not afraid to share when she felt a lack of confidence from her famous mentors, like Rick Rubin, who more or less discovered her but then found her a not overly pliable production client, or T Bone Burnett, who told her that she had an affectation in her voice, which didn’t sit well. She’s subsequently made up with both those producers, and you know that from the fact that she names them. Carlile leaves nameless another producer who helmed an early, shelved version of her “Give Up the Ghost” album, who flat-out told her she was incapable of delivering a live vocal; some studio sins are less easily forgiven than others.

Carlile’s life seems about equal parts hardscrabble and charmed, so when the Cinderella moments come —becoming a BFF at Joni Mitchell’s in the last couple years being one of them — she’s still continents away from anything the reader will experience as entitlement. Hope you like rats and feral cats (and, yes, the renegade horses of the title), because some of the best stories have to do with an impoverished upbringing in a series of ramshackle houses and single-wides that seem like something out of Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” The spell of the trailer home as weirdly paradisical, even with an alcoholic father, is cast well enough that it’s a bit of a shock to be reminded that this is not taking place in the holler but not too many miles removed from modern-ish suburban Washington, which comes back to the fore when Carlile recalls why she really did not fit in with her peers — not so much because she was gay, but because she dug the Judds more than Nirvana. (If you have heard her sit in with Soundgarden, you know that’s an imbalance she eventually got over.)

Religion and spirituality are recurring themes, before and after Pastor Steve makes his ill-fated cameo; anyone who grew up (or even remains) evangelical will surely get a good laugh out of a chapter header as bluntly prosaic as “Baptists Are Mean.” The divine talk starts early and often when Carlile survives that meningitis, although she also notes its practical impact: “Everyone agreed that God kept me alive because He had a plan for me. The grossly inflated sense of self-importance was official.” This surely is one of the very few memoirs in which the protagonist becomes forever convinced of the existence of the almighty by childhood experiences involving a supernatural tape recorder. (“I think God quite clearly has a preference for analog tape,” she notes at a later point.) Addressing the question many readers will have about why she still invokes the J-word in light of the condemnation she had such a first-hand experience with, Carlile acknowledges that nearly everything she holds dear has “has been impacted negatively by Christianity in one way or the other. I am okay with that perspective and I think it’s healthy. I, too, have been negatively impacted by it. But something mystical brings me back time and time again to the revolutionary gospel of forgiveness.”

Anger isn’t a big enduring part of Carlile’s emotional vocabulary, but righteousness is. Recounting a situation in which a winner at the Americana Music Honors denounced the entire genre while accepting his award, Carlile writes, “A pet peeve of mine is the ‘award denier,’ the ‘I don’t care about these self-aggrandizing dog-and-pony-shows’ types. Kindly fuck off, please. Heart emoji.” Explaining her emotion when she went on to win a slew of Grammys over the last three years, she explains, “The song ‘We Are the Champions’ by Queen has never not made me cry. Teams, winning, losing, being picked or rejected: These themes are traumatic for some LGBTQ folks. It’s okay to want to be champions for a little while. Our path is long and fraught with submission. Triumph is a beautiful theme for 2020 queers.”

There are two major love stories in the book. One is with “the twins,” Phil and Tim Hanseroth , who make up the other two-thirds of the band she considers “Brandi Carlile” to be, and who clearly share her love for Tom Sawyer-esque, grown-up misadventure as well as A-list chops. The other is with Catherine Shepherd, her wife of 14 years.. or maybe less, depending on what country or state you’re in. “A person’s self-worth is dictated by what inalienable rights are allowed to them. The right to not live your life alone is a big one,” she writes. Their story as parents is a crucial piece of the memoir: “Same-sex parenting might read clinical, but that’s only because it’s so new,” she writes. “Gay domesticity has a path, but it isn’t well worn yet and we need to humanize these stories because history is happening all around us. Right now.” But the sweetest part of this entire section — notwithstanding how bracingly she writes about her own experience — may be the passage she devotes to her newfound sympathy for straight dads, something she picks up after attending some father-to-be classes (as the non-birth-giver in her marriage) and finding men constantly being made the butt of derisive jokes. She may never write an extra verse to “The Joke” about it, but Carlile is just a leave-no-butt-of-the-joke-behind type of empath.

Even for any potential reader whose eyes might glaze over at the thought of social issues, there’s plenty to chew on in “Broken Horses” just as a show-biz memoir. Carlile articulates as well as any writer ever has the enthralling dynamic of expectancy in being backstage — maybe not an undying thrill for every seasoned pro, but it remains one for Carlile now as much as it was when she was first about to step onto the stage of the Pacific Northwest’s own regional Grand Ole Opry knockoff as a kid in the single digits. For someone whose presence is decidedly earthy, she also explains why she feels it’s important to dress up for every single show, to signal to the audience that you’re not taking the show lightly — it’s an occasion. (If that also happens to dovetail with her flair for Gucci suit jackets or the glittery androgyny of a certain kind of Opry-ready coat, no worse for the Western wear.)

The final chapters could risk being too “We Are the Champions”-level triumphant, but this Cinderella really likes to get her knees dirty with tasks like advanced carpentry and forestry, after the ball. In keeping with her Elton adulation, she readily allows that she’s part glam-loving “Captain Fantastic” and part woodsy-living “Brown Dirt Cowboy.” The year after winning all those 2019 Grammys was spent largely on the 90-acre compound she shares with her family members, band cohorts and even the former partner who inspired all her breakup songs (Carlile cracks: “My ex Kim lives here; so lesbian”), wielding a machete and a hedge trimmer to cut paths for their ATVs. The cherry on top of her story is that she’s not just figuratively blazing trails.

“Broken Horses: A Memoir” Brandi Carlile Crown Books 336 pages; $28

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BROKEN HORSES

by Brandi Carlile ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 6, 2021

An intimate, life-affirming look at a musician whose artistic journey is far from over.

The multiple Grammy Award–winning troubadour chronicles her life and career so far.

Carlile has quite a story to tell, and she digs deep into her memories of her formative years in the Pacific Northwest: poverty, evictions, transience, familial struggles with alcoholism and depression, and the meningitis that put her into a coma and accelerated her exit from childhood. Early in her adolescence, she knew she was gay, which brought a host of other challenges, not least because “I was told for most of my childhood by multiple sources that to be gay was a one-way ticket to hell.” Throughout the narrative, Carlile shows acute grace and clarity as she follows her navigation of certain rites of passage. Participating in her family’s band, she was a precocious child who loved the spotlight. After dropping out of high school, she continued her musical development with her own band and subsequent solo career. A turning point arrived with her collaboration with twin brothers Tim and Phil Hanseroth, established fixtures on the Seattle scene who added vocal and instrumental richness and increased her credibility with her expanding audience. Like many musicians, Carlile had run-ins with labels and producers and experienced the physical and mental suffering that a balance of recording and touring can inflict. Then there’s the personal side: falling in love and fighting for the right to get married as a gay woman, have children, and take her children on tour. Along with lyrics and snapshots that suggest a scrapbook, the author provides crucial behind-the-scenes insight into her rise to stardom. Especially illuminating are her descriptions of the process of creating such songs as “The Story” and “The Joke,” showing how her personal struggles strengthened her art. The story builds to her Grammy triumphs, her role in the Highwomen supergroup, her co-production of childhood hero Tanya Tucker, and her friendships with Joni Mitchell, Elton John, and the Obamas. With plenty more likely to come, the memoir ends on a high note.

Pub Date: April 6, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-23724-3

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021

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by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.

Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.

Pub Date: July 12, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022

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by Melania Trump ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 8, 2024

A slick, vacuous glimpse into the former first lady’s White House years.

A carefully curated personal portrait.

First ladies’ roles have evolved significantly in recent decades. Their memoirs typically reflect a spectrum of ambition and interests, offering insights into their values and personal lives. Melania Trump, however, stands out as exceptionally private and elusive. Her ultra-lean account attempts to shed light on her public duties, initiatives, and causes as first lady, and it defends certain actions like her controversial “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” jacket. The statement was directed at the media, not the border situation, she claims. Yet the book provides scant detail about her personal orbit or day-to-day interactions. The memoir opens with her well-known Slovenian origin story, successful modeling career, and whirlwind romance with Donald Trump, culminating in their 2005 marriage, followed by a snapshot of Election Day 2016: “Each time we were together that day, I was impressed by his calm.…This man is remarkably confident under pressure.” Once in the White House, Melania Trump describes her functions and numerous public events at home and abroad, which she asserts were more accomplished than media representations suggested. However, she rarely shares any personal interactions beyond close family ties, notably her affection for her son, Barron, and her sister, Ines. And of course she lavishes praise on her husband. Minimal anecdotes about White House or cabinet staff are included, and she carefully defuses her rumored tensions with Trump’s adult children, blandly stating, “While we may share the same last name, each of us is distinct with our own aspirations and paths to follow.” Although Melania’s desire to support causes related to children’s and women’s welfare feels authentic, the overall tenor of her memoir seems aimed at painting a glimmering portrait of her husband and her role, likely with an eye toward the forthcoming election.

Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024

ISBN: 9781510782693

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing

Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024

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Brandi Carlile Holds Nothing Back In Her New Book 'Broken Horses'

The singer/songwriter's must-read book shares life lessons and intimate moments in her own words.

Country Living editors select each product featured. If you buy from a link, we may earn a commission. Why Trust Us?

Sunday, March 14, was a day for the memory books for Brandi Carlile . Not only did the singer/songwriter cover John Prine's "I Remember Everything" for the 63rd Grammy Awards, The Highwomen (the country group the singer/songwriter is a part of alongside Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris , and Amanda Shires) won the Best Country Song award for “ Crowded Table .” The song's lyrics—a clarion call for inclusion—also happen to be reflective of themes at the heart of Brandi's soon-to-be-released memoir, Broken Horses .

I want a house with a crowded table, And a place by the fire for everyone. Let us take on the world while we're young and able, And bring us back together when the day is done. –"Crowded Table"

Broken Horses carries with it the same gritty honesty and self-reflection that fans find in the singer/songwriter's music. From the bout of meningococcal meningitis that sent her into a dreamlike coma to the family dynamics and poverty that framed her early life and informed her first songs, Brandi does in Broken Horses what fans have come to expect from her: She explores the personal in a way that is unruffled and universally relatable.

Fans who are accustomed to the lines of truth that cut through Brandi's music—the lyrics you write on notebooks and in social media posts, the melodies that stick in your head and return to you while you're paused at stoplights—will find more jewels in the book. Whether she's telling of those who believed in her music early and championed her career when she was just starting out, or speaking to the active, love-as-a-verb emotion that she teaches her daughters, Broken Horses isn't just another addition to pantheon of celebrity musician memoirs. Even casual fans will find depth and exploration here that'll keep them turning the page.

nashville, tennessee january 16 brandi carlile performs at the ryman auditorium on january 16, 2020 in nashville, tennessee photo by jason kempingetty images

Brandi also writes candidly about her journey as a lesbian person of faith and her path into marriage and motherhood . These are experiences and conversations that remain pivotal in any person's life, but especially in the life of someone in the LGBTQ+ community. Her rejection by her church at a key time in her life—and the resulting support from her community—set Brandi on a path of self-discovery and acceptance through the most powerful tool she had: music.

nashville, tennessee november 13 for editorial use only brandi carlile and catherine shepherd backstage during the 53rd annual cma awards at bridgestone arena on november 13, 2019 in nashville, tennessee photo by robby kleingetty images for cma

From the honky-tonk music circuit to touring the country, Broken Horses doesn't just chronicle the musical momentum that led to hits like "The Story," "The Joke," and "The Mother" (though that's in here, too).

Crown Broken Horses: A Memoir

Key songs bookend each chapter, acting as guideposts from the written word to the music, and readers will find themselves pausing between chapters to listen again to a song or two in a new light. In this way, Brandi's stories come alive anew, and new fans and old will feel more connected than ever to the singer's wise and wonderful words.

Broken Horses is available everywhere from Crown on April 6, 2021, at local bookshops and digitally.

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Brandi Carlile shares her creative hunger and humility in memoir Broken Horses : Review

Brandi Carlile has had an extraordinary past three years, thanks in large part to a thrice Grammy-winning career-peak album in By the Way, I Forgive You , plus three more albums' worth of material she created for Tanya Tucker, the Secret Sisters, and her own country-folk supergroup, the Highwomen . Topping it off with a memoir came out of a hunger that's pushed Carlile to keep working, and Broken Horses is a product and examination of that hunger. It's also an exegesis of empathy: how it took root within her, the ways it's dictated her relationships, its role as the engine driving her songwriting. The same things that make her music so remarkable can be found in her prose: If you're a fan of Carlile, you already love this book.

The story itself waves at a number of familiar beats in the journey of an artist of her ilk: the electric thrill of performing for the first time, the friction of being a gay teen at a time when support was hard to find, the hardscrabble years of hustling to be heard in front of an audience, the successes tempered by complications like prescription-drug addiction and romantic self-sabotage. Carlile is reluctant to simply recount one milestone after another, instead offering through-lines that generate connections, like a recurring theme about her litmus test for anyone entering her orbit — from her wife, Catherine Shepherd, to producers and agents — whether she falls in love with them right away.

Even the book's structure is sneakily sharp, with each chapter followed by lyrics to relevant songs (usually, but not always, hers). In another context, that could be dismissed as filler. Here, they are crucial to the story, providing reflection and putting a microscope on Carlile's songwriting process; the words to "Sugartooth" follow recollections of how a friend's death by suicide affected those who loved him, revealing one glimpse among many of how her life begets her art.

Carlile writes in a voice that's earthy, frank, endearingly dorky, and open-hearted (see her letter asking Eddie Vedder to contribute to a benefit album she oversaw). She's generous with her faults and generous to them, admitting that she can be "a narcissistic, insufferable a--hole" with "a way of finding the kindest people to let down" while also extending forgiveness to herself.

As the singer writes in her book, before she first got signed, she agreed to put her "B-sides" on the demo that became her self-titled debut album, so that her A material could be recorded properly later. Carlile's since learned not to save the good stuff for later. Besides, she's always found more of it around the corner. Grade: A

REVIEW: Broken Horses by Brandi Carlile

Despite being familiar with Brandi Carlile’s music, her new book Broken Horses took me by surprise. Generally, I would expect memoirs by artists to be enjoyable, perhaps gratuitous, for fans, but Broken Horses is, I daresay, of a different breed. It is impressive in its wisdom and authenticity, and a book that I would recommend regardless of whether the reader has listened to Carlile’s music.

The book chronicles Carlile’s life and development as an artist through present-day, and is punctuated by song lyrics (Carlile’s, as well as other songs and artists mentioned in the prose, including the Indigo Girls, Elton John, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, and others) and annotated photos. It is part narrative and part introspection, and it is self-deprecating, humorous, and raw. The cast of characters is extensive, anchored in the center by Carlile’s musical “family,” including her bandmembers Phil and Tim, her wife, Catherine, and two daughters. It is a vivid portrait of a human being who also happens to be a GRAMMY-winning singer-songwriter.

Broken Horses also traverses a wide range of themes in its three hundred pages: family, friendship, sexuality, religion, forgiveness, and many others. Carlile offers her thoughts and experience of each, without pretending to have all the answers. One of my favorite passages in the entire book is in relation to the genesis of the 2018 album By the Way, I Forgive You . In addition to its insight (even in its admission of lack of insight), it also, in my opinion, captures the essence of Broken Horses as a whole:

“Before I start sounding too earnest, understand that I wasn’t “teaching” forgiveness. I was and still am learning it. I’m not evolved. I’m as much a part of the problem as every other person in the world. This isn’t wisdom or insight, it’s a work in progress and it never did come from me. It came from our parents and grandparents. Our flawed heroes and our favorite TV shows. We were just playing dress-up and trying forgiveness on like a costume. We intend to learn these lessons over and over again the hard way for as long as we’re human. If you want the real thing 100 percent pure, the Everclear …you should talk to Lazarus.” -Brandi Carlile, Broken Horses (2021), Chapter 17: By The Way

Quite fittingly, I would describe Broken Horses as a song above anything else (which makes sense, considering the author). It is a song of the human experience, and one that is not to be missed.

JM is a dual degree student in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance and the College of Engineering. Some of her favorite things include running, reading, all things creative, and the color purple.

Brandi Carlile – Broken Horses – A Memoir [Review]

A Review of

Broken Horses: A Memoir Brandi Carlile

Hardback: Crown, 2021 Buy Now: [ IndieBound ] [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ] [ Audible ] Reviewed by Katie Crosby

*** LISTEN TO an NPR interview with the author

When I found out Brandi Carlile was writing a new memoir called Broken Horses, I could not wait to buy a copy. I became fascinated with Carlile after she played “The Joke” at the 2019 Grammy Awards. “Who is this woman singing about Syrian refugees and gay kids being bullied?” I said to myself. I had to find out more.

I quickly learned that you cannot put Brandi Carlile in a box. She has a passion for social justice and plays a concert for incarcerated women every year. Carlile is a multi-award winning Grammy artist and a self-proclaimed “Jesus freak” who keeps a copy of Brennan Manning’s The Ragamuffin Gospel on her bedside table. She’s also a lesbian who was kicked out of her teenage church.

I read Broken Horses from cover to cover within 24 hours. I expected an honest, heartbreaking tale, but I was also met with sincere humility and personal transformation. Carlile is familiar with tragedy. She faced her own mortality at age four after developing a bad case of meningitis. In the hospital, she flat-lined multiple times and survived a coma. Raised in a tiny town in rural Washington, she grew up poor. Her family moved multiple times and she eventually dropped out of high school. As difficult as these things were to read, the most devastating storyline happened in chapter eight.

Carlile tells a harrowing story about attending church camp as a teenager and deciding to get baptized. She invited her family to attend the big event, but moments before the service —with her family and friends already gathered in the audience — the pastor asked to speak privately with her. “Do you practice homosexuality?” he sheepishly said. “You know me. You know my girlfriend. You let me go through the training program,” Brandi responded. Then she ran out of the church, embarrassed in front of her entire community.

It would be understandable if Carlile never gave Jesus a second thought after such a traumatic event, but this didn’t happen. Despite the church’s rejection of her, she continued to be curious about Jesus. A mystic at heart, Carlile weaves tales throughout the book about her spirituality. As a little girl, music calmed her when she couldn’t sleep at night. She listened to a cassette with kids church songs on it but at the end of the tape there was an additional song with “big, gorgeous, angelic voices in multiple layers of complex harmony.” Carlile fell in love with the song, but when she brought it up to her parents they both insisted that they had not added it to the tape. With the mystery unsolved, she makes peace that the addition was perhaps supernatural. She concludes, “I listened to that music every night. It was my proof that God is real.”

Occurrences like this kept Carlile coming back to Jesus. Early into her music career, she describes feeling “rudderless.” Unresolved pain from her childhood still held a grip on her and she was taking it out on others as well as her own body. Looking for answers, she says “I dove into an independent Bible study that led me to read the Good Book itself and then thousands of pages on Luther, Calvin, and the Reformation gospels, as well as some of the great pop-culture Christian icons of our time: Brennan Manning, Rob Bell, Rachel Held Evans , Greg Boyd, C.S. Lewis (p. 148).”

She finally “decided to confront my fear of church and what I came to understand was actually a moderate form of PTSD by sitting through unknown sermons and surrounding myself with strangers.” She was baptized on Easter Sunday in 2009 and even considered enrolling in seminary after developing a passion for her faith.

As I read this part of her story, I found myself crying. Crying for all the LGBT kids who are kicked out of their homes and churches because of their sexuality but, unlike Brandi, are simply too scarred to return. When I read about Carlile finding Jesus on her own terms, I wondered: how often do kids have to do the hard labor of reconciling their faith and sexuality all by themselves?

Most Christians from conservative circles would dismiss Carlile’s story of faith on the grounds of her same sex marriage, but those who do are missing out on invaluable lessons about forgiveness, redemption, and justice. It struck me that Carlile practices forgiveness better than most Christians I know. She created an entire album called “By the Way, I Forgive You” and publicly forgave the pastor who humiliated her. She then asked her audience to consider who they needed to forgive.

When Carlile discusses the people who have hurt her, her tone is charitable. She looks back on that traumatic time and says “I see grace everywhere.” Brandi admits that her first attempt to be baptized was more of a cultural rite of passage than an actual transformation. She writes, “I never spoke to him again. But I wasn’t mad at him. I didn’t feel ‘wronged’ yet because I still felt wrong. I was nowhere near ready to be forgiven… (p. 86).” I stopped to imagine a church that takes cues from Brandi Carlile on how to speak about those who have hurt us and those with whom we profoundly disagree. What would it look like to lay our weapons down, give one another the benefit of the doubt, and practice uncharged honesty? This does not make what she’s been through acceptable, but it demonstrates the beauty found when we refuse to define ourselves by fear and bitterness.

Carlile is a case study on transformation. When the church labeled her “unclean” and cast her outside the city gate, she used this as inspiration to help others who have been rejected. One of Carlile’s childhood idols is Tanya Tucker. Tucker was a popular country singer in the 1970s but was deemed “finished” by the music industry after a public divorce and a long battle with addiction. Carlile convinced Tucker to make an album with her after a 17 year musical drought, but when Carlile pitched it to leaders in the industry she “heard countless times that no one would be willing to give Tanya a second chance (p. 269).” Because of Carlile’s tenacious belief and willingness to advocate for an outcast, she helped Tanya not only create another album but go on to win the Grammy for Best Country Song for “Bring My Flowers Now” and Best Country Album for “While I’m Livin’ in 2020.

Broken Horses stands out as a resounding example that the people the church deems “unworthy” may be the very people Jesus wants us to learn from the most. They are often the ones quietly doing what Jesus actually asks of us.

Many may be surprised to learn about Carlile’s spirituality, but if they pick up this book, they will find rich gospel undertones that stretch the ethical imagination.

Katie Crosby

Katie Crosby is a social worker (MSW) and freelance grant-writer. In her spare time, she writes on faith and her previous work can be found at Fathom Magazine. Find her on Twitter @crosby_katie and Instagram @katie_crosby .

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One Comment

Thank you for reviewing Broken Horses. I actually just received a copy, but have not read it yet. I have all of Brandi’s albums. My wife and I discovered her music together and both felt some kind of connection to the music. Reading your review told me of some parallels at least. My wife passed away last July and I’ve been trying to find my spirituality again. Hoping the book will help me find my way. If Brandi can, maybe so can I. Looking forward to reading it.

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MENINGITIS AND THE EARLY EDUCATION OF AN EMPATH

The Carliles are nail-biters. I started biting my nails at three years old. Everyone told me that if I didn’t keep my hands out of my mouth, I’d get sick.

I contracted meningococcal meningitis at age four.

We were living in Burien, Washington, in a single-wide trailer near the Sea-Tac Airport.

It was our third house since I was born. I’m the first born into my family and the first grandchild on both sides, contributing to my inflated sense of self-importance and burden of perceived responsibility. My life really starts here.

Before all that, though, my parents met at the Red Lion Hotel. My mother was a hostess and my father was a breakfast prep cook. My dad is very intelligent and intense, with a sick sense of humor. He’s one of six siblings raised dirt-poor on a dirt floor by a single mom in south Seattle. He’s got a father, too, but he and my grandmother divorced very young, and like many of the men on the Carlile side very rarely speaks a word. There are some quiet men in my family but none as quiet as Grandpa Jerry . . . you can feel how much he loves you, but he probably won’t ever say it. It almost seems like a genetic trait, this strange brand of anxiety and quiet intensity. He had a daughter later in life, bringing the number of Dad’s siblings to seven.

My mother had a more comfortable childhood. She’s one of three girls and like her mother has always been very charming and mischievous. She can read a room like no one else. She’s vain. She loves music and art. If she’s sunny and happy, then everyone she meets is too. Her enthusiasm can’t be resisted. If she’s not in a good space though, you’re not going to be either.

[ Return to the review of “Broken Horses.” ]

To put it mildly, they’re special . . . and sparkly and complicated. When they met, my mom was twenty and my dad was twenty-one. Mom’s family had temporarily relocated to Colorado, so she moved straight in with the crazy Carlile family. When my mother got pregnant with me, she and my father decided to get married. Like so many people who married this young, they are still married . . . and in many ways, are still very young.

For this and many other reasons, we moved around a lot after I was born. Fourteen houses actually. And lots of different schools. It’s deceiving because sometimes they were all in the same district. Beverly Park Elementary for kindergarten and then to Hill Top Elementary, from there to Cascade View to North Hill Elementary to Olympic Elementary and then back to Hill Top, then there was Rock Creek Elementary, Tahoma Junior High, Glacier Park. And that was all before high school.

I don’t think there was ever a housing transition I didn’t want to make. There was always an exciting and dramatic buildup to the moving. Sometimes we moved because of evictions and job changes, sometimes for good reasons, like a better housing opportunity or a step up in comfort thanks to some connection that my charismatic parents had made. Either way, due to my frequently changing scenery and the undercurrent of chaos that poverty often creates, I developed somewhat of a photographic memory. It appears in all of its vivid detail right around the age of two.

Bedrooms change, the color of the wallpaper, the smell of a hand-me-down couch, the hum of a rental unit’s avocado-colored refrigerator. There’s a washing machine that is frequently mistaken for an earthquake, or a friendly neighbor with a horse called Pepper, or someone who lets you hop their fence to retrieve your Frisbee. Different houses sometimes came with different pets and the loss or abandonment of the old ones at the old place. And of course, there were the feuds. I remember every drunk neighbor. The busybodies and gossips, the liberals and the divorcees. I can recall the name of just about every landlord who evicted us and my parents’ list of grievances against them. I also remember every helping hand. Every nonjudgmental influence over our family and the impact of such relationships on our lifestyle. More than all this I remember worrying quite a bit.

Most people live in their childhood homes for a while. It softens the edges on the memories and gives them a comforting wash, a kind of afterglow, set against routine and consistency. For kids like me for whom every experience is set against a different visual and intense circumstance, it’s really easy to remember details of an early life. I see this now as a priceless gift . . . but it isn’t one I’d give to my kids. They’re going to have to get scrappy some other way ’cause I don’t have the stomach for it anymore.

Burien is all concrete and strip malls now, but parts of it used to feel like the country.

The airport has since shut down most of the land our trailer was on when I got sick. I think it was in a fuel dump zone, or some FAA law changed and it became uninhabitable somehow.

My little brother, Jay, and I were Irish twins. He was irresistible, with blond hair and blue eyes, full of pure drama, charisma, and conviction from birth. At only eleven months and twenty-seven days older than him, I thought he was adorable—and he was mine. He was tougher than me. My parents had to implore me to stand up for myself physically with Jay, because while we didn’t really fight in a mutual sense, he fought the hell out of me. I couldn’t work out whether he was supposed to be my formidable foe or my protected baby brother. It’s an odd age difference. I was getting ready to start kindergarten. My dad wanted me to be homeschooled, but he came up against too much resistance from the rest of the family . . . I understand both inclinations now. The one to keep your kid at home when they seem so small and underprepared and the one that urges us to overcome all that and send them anyway.

I was shy and quiet but very clever. I was good at rhyming, had an extensive vocabulary, and had already dreamed up some songs — “Smile at the sun, smile at the sun, life is so much fun, when you smile at the sun.” I still hear the melodies. My parents had no experience with children but had been told by enough people that I was advanced. So when my grandmother on my dad’s side heard from a neighbor about a program at the University of Washington for gifted children, she hipped my mom to it and I was enrolled at the age of four. I have memories of wearing a lead jacket and playing with children’s toys . . . presumably whilst being X-rayed? Now it seems dubious to say the least, but let’s chalk it up to the ’80s.

I had been a colicky baby with some weird infancy health issues that I had grown out of, but my mother had never grown out of her irrational tendency to worry about me. My dad was well aware of this and didn’t attempt to hide his annoyance. Every sneeze or childish complaint would send my mother rushing to the phone to dial “24 Nurse” or Poison Control.

My illness when it hit felt like an extra-dreamy flu to me. Nausea and vomiting, but also a sense of euphoria that I can only imagine must be what morphine is like. My mother’s first call was to my dad. They had a fight. Mom had no car and he wasn’t about to leave work for yet another fruitless night in the ER for strep throat or gas. She hung up and called 24 Nurse. The TV was on. I remember vividly what it felt like to sink into our brown floral couch feeling so heavy and relaxed I couldn’t hold my head up or stay awake. Mom was describing the symptoms to the woman on the phone and after a couple of minutes, she appeared at the couch. “Does she need to be sitting up?” she asked as she propped me up on another pillow. That’s when my mother asked me to try and touch my chin to my chest. The last thing I remember was my mother frantically shouting into the phone, “Her eyes are rolling back in her head!”

I wound up on the floor in the backseat of my parents’ car. I don’t know how I got there. There wasn’t time for a car seat and I vaguely remember being so uncomfortable sitting up that I was whimpering and asking if I could get on the floor. I don’t know why they didn’t call an ambulance. Dad’s work was very close, and I am guessing they didn’t call an ambulance because deep down they still weren’t sure if they could trust themselves about what was an emergency and what wasn’t. I don’t remember arriving at the hospital, but I’m told that my heart stopped forty-five minutes later.

Everything past the car ride and before coming out of my coma is abstract. A foggy awareness of a very disabled blond-haired little girl with meningitis exactly my age who would never wake up from her coma . . . voices, flashes of light, adult conversations overheard in a dream state but nothing that can be trusted in recollection.

I take that seriously.

It can be hard to understand the difference between what you remember and the things other people tell you about your childhood, but I have a theory that people who are beyond consciousness or in a coma enter an astral plane of perception—what they hear in that state is clear and stored forever. I think we enter this state many times in our lives. Sometimes when we dream, sometimes when we disassociate, most extremely if we cross over through a near-death experience. This state informs who we are in between two worlds . . . which is probably who we really are.

Adults experiencing trauma might not always think children can hear them in any situation. I imagine a coma magnifies this assumption. Things get frantic and are discussed in barely hushed tones. I remember terrified adults if I remember anything. Before meningitis, grandparents were just fun older people who loved and spoiled us. My parents were each other’s sworn enemy and the final word in life . . . all-powerful keepers of the universe. My adorable brother hated me, plain and simple. Aunties and uncles were super fun and loving grown-up stoner friends without any tangible connection to my actual family that I could reasonably identify.

The first thing I remember about the day I woke from my coma is something about a sunrise. I’ve been fascinated with them for most of my life. Not enough to wake up early to enjoy them, but on those few occasions when I have, I’ve been reminded what a miracle it is that they happen every day, regardless of the one before.

The second thing I remember is that I was STARVING! The party really started when my maternal grandmother, Grandma Dolores, got there and I asked for a tomato (my favorite food). The room erupted into chaos, tears, and laughter and then the questions: “What’s your name? How old are you? What’s your favorite food? What’s Grandma’s dog’s name and what color is he?” Brandi, almost five, tomatoes, Aspen, black . I remember my grandmother joyfully exclaiming, “I’m going out to get you whatever you want!” (I imagine this was to give my parents some space.) “It can be anything!” she said. I thought about it for only a split second because I knew exactly what to ask for. “A full-size Rainbow Brite doll,” I said, “and a really big tomato.”

I didn’t know I’d been gone. What I did know was Poor Kid Survival 101: You gotta know what you want and don’t hesitate to ask for it, or you won’t get it. Be ready to seize every opportunity; everyone is a potential resource. Especially your grandma.

But as the sensation of awakening set in, I had a developing and disturbingly deeper understanding of who all these people really were. The picture would only get clearer as I got older. My grandparents were suddenly the extremely worried parents of MY young parents. My folks didn’t seem very powerful anymore. I had now seen them both cry a lot and it sent a chill down my spine to know how little control they had over the outcome of this or anything else ever again.

My mother was relieved beyond words when I regained consciousness, full of joy and frailty. My dad was quiet and sheepish, he even seemed somehow shorter. His relief had softened him to me, and I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. I was out of tolerance for needles, IVs, or anything else that pokes or stings, and my parents were suddenly powerless to protect me from them. They were submitting to the doctors with a gratitude and humility that now through the eyes of a thirty-nine-year-old mother is more than righteous. But at the time this was an awakening to life’s subtle power structures . . . for me it came too early and in the wrong kind of package.

My aunts and uncles were so obviously my parents’ siblings now. I had always been told this was so, but my understanding was childlike. I couldn’t picture it . Now I could. It was even obvious which ones were older by who was comforting my parents and who was looking to them for comfort. My father’s youngest sister, Aunt Nichole, was suddenly another child. She even looked different. She was just a “big girl” to me now.

These realizations led to me feeling somewhat guardianless. It isn’t anyone’s fault, but this awakening should come much later in life for a very important reason: I’m still untangling what it means to confront mortality and powerlessness.

Perhaps the deepest epiphany came one morning in the hospital after I woke up. The door to my room opened and my little towheaded brother bolted to my bed hysterically crying and telling me he loved me. It wasn’t like a scene from a movie; it wasn’t sweet. It was pain and stress. Proper trauma. He must have overheard conversations about the likelihood of me pulling through. And he might have had an awareness of the little girl next to me and what was being discussed around her prognosis. To me it meant two things: that he loved me and that he was a child—and in some ways, I wasn’t anymore.

I remember the first time I worried about my mom. It was also the first memory I have of my constant companion—debilitating empathy (which is a fancy couple of words for guilt). I was still in the hospital and nearing my birthday. I had a Cabbage Patch Kid doll called Emmy that I was really attached to. My mom had met some lady in an alleyway and paid cash for her on the toy black market the year these dolls were in high demand. Horrendous-looking little things, but they were a hot commodity in 1984. My incredible nurses understood how tired I’d grown of the IVs and they made me a little IV kit for Emmy. I was ecstatic about this development. All I had to do was undergo one procedure for which I had to be put under (probably my last spinal tap), and when I woke up my reward was supposed to be constructing the doll-sized IV.

For all the right reasons, my mother thought she’d surprise me and put the whole thing together so that when I woke up, I could immediately play with it. But when I woke up, I was disproportionately furious. There was so little I had control over in there. I just wanted to build something on my own and get a little power back over something that was happening to me against my will. So I acted like a normal five-year-old and threw a fit. My mother of course totally understood, but because I’d become so perceptive, I immediately noticed the exhaustion and defeat on her face. I remembered everything I’d just put her through and was struck down by how guilty I felt.

They had told me to stop biting my nails.

That moment bothered me until I was an adult . . . until I had my children and realized that these are completely normal childish moments of innocent selfishness. The idea that a child might carry around guilt or a sense of responsibility for us as parents is so unfair . . . but I worry about it a lot.

I had flatlined several times and awoken from a coma. There was talk of miracles and mysticism. Jesus was in sharp focus.

Some members of our family were very religious; some just casually, but almost everyone believed in God. Mom’s side of the family were technically Catholic. The Carlile family was loosely Baptist— some devout, some of them fragmented and became Evangelical, some even Jehovah’s Witnesses. We had one Greek atheist and a few agnostics. The Jonestown Massacre had broken my father’s heart. He would soon be baptized Mormon and then become viscerally anti-Mormon. Procter & Gamble were supposedly Satan-worshippers and it was all happening.

I survived. One day, Dad turned the TV dial to the Christian channel and broke the dial off the TV. I couldn’t watch ThunderCats anymore. But everyone agreed that God kept me alive because He had a plan for me.

The grossly inflated sense of self-importance was official.

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Review of Broken Horses by Brandi Carlile

In Broken Horses , Brandi Carlile shares a beautifully open, poignant, tough, rich, gorgeous account of her life and career so far. The audiobook includes over thirty songs, and I highly recommend it.

I listened to Broken Horses: A Memoir by Brandi Carlile, and I highly recommend the audiobook. I can't imagine feeling the full emotion and immersive experience of this book without hearing Carlile's voice tell it--and without all of the music Carlile offers here. She weaves more than thirty songs into her stories and personal history, and the placement of the music feels seamless and illustrative.

Broken Horses feels like a memoir for which I might actually need to experience the audiobook and the physical book, which contains photos from Carlile's life.

In Broken Horses , Carlile traces her life's beginnings, her creative influences, her struggles with feeling at peace with herself, and the specifics of her musical journey and her personal life.

She shares the pressures of the music business, the difficulties in taking care of her voice and her body while trying to create and push and perform, and her magical encounters with idols who have become friends--including Elton John, Dolly Parton, Joni Mitchell, and Tanya Tucker.

I often feel torn when I read celebrity memoirs, because while I understand that people must keep some of themselves for themselves, I often find myself greedily wanting more more more vulnerability, detailed experiences, specific inspirations, an exhaustive exhuming of pivotal moments--and also a panoramic view of a person and a career. If I'm getting a peek at a person, I also want it all, however unreasonable that may be.

In Broken Horses , Brandi Carlile shares a beautifully open, poignant, tough, rich, gorgeous account of her life and career so far. She is thoughtful, humble, and so gracefully fluid and curious, I treasured each moment she shared here.

Carlile intersperses songs with stories about their impact on her or the influences that led her to write and create them. The songs are all included again at the very end of the book, by which point the listener understands their import. They felt incredibly powerful as a closure to her story.

Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book?

If you like memoirs, you might try the books on the Greedy Reading Lists Six Illuminating Memoirs I've Read This Year , Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into , and Six More Illuminating Memoirs to Lose Yourself In .

And if you like books about music, you might like the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Rockin' Stories about Bands and Music .

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