Broken is the the story of a woman's transformation through her work with an Arapaho medicine man and horse trainer.
Writer Lisa Jones went to Wyoming for a four-day magazine assignment. She was committed to a long-term relationship, building a career, and searching for something she could not name.
At a dusty corral on the Wind River Indian Reservation, she met Stanford Addison, a Northern Arapaho who seemed to transform everything around him. He gentled horses rather than breaking them. It was said he could heal people of everything from cancer to bipolar disorder. He did all this from a wheelchair; he had been a quadriplegic for more than twenty years.
Intrigued, Lisa sat at Stanford’s kitchen table and watched. And she listened to his story. Stanford spent his teenage years busting broncos, seducing girls, and dealing drugs. At twenty, he left the house for another night of partying. By morning, a violent accident had robbed him of his physical prowess and left in its place unwelcome spiritual powers—an exchange so shocking that Stanford spent several years trying to kill himself. Eventually he surrendered to his new life and mysterious gifts. Over the years Lisa was a frequent visitor to Stanford’s place, the reservation and its people worked on her, exposing and healing the places where she, too, was broken. This is her story, intertwined with Stanford’s, and it explores powerful spirits, material poverty, spiritual wealth, friendship, violence, confusion, death, and above all else, love.
“A stunning accomplishment! Lisa Jones captures the wild beauty of the Wind River Reservation, the pathos and joy of the Arapahos who live there, and the remarkable life of a modern-day medicine man. All of this while on a healing journey into the broken places of her own heart.”
– Margaret Coel, author of Blood Memory
“A beautifully written, heart wrenching journey into the depths of the soul. A tale of mystery, courage, and love between men, women and horses.”
-- Jim Fergus, author of One Thousand White Women and The Wild Girl
“Arapaho elder Stanford Addison is the most wonderful of heroes - and Jones is exactly the guide to bring him to us."
--Alexandra Fuller, author of The Legend of Colton H. Bryant and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
"Intrepid only begins to describe Lisa Jones, who goes to admirable and adventuresome lengths to take the measure of a singular American spirit.”
—Ted Conover, author of The Routes of Man and Newjack
