LINWOOD — The neatly manicured lawns, ball fields and a packed house at the Linwood Library are a world away from where author Ginger Gaffney now calls home in Valverde, New Mexico.
Gaffney, daughter of the late John Gaffney, former Linwood mayor, Atlantic County commissioner, and New Jersey assemblyman, read several chapters from her memoir book “Half Broke” to a friendly crowd gathered at the Linwood Library last week.
Gaffney made the cross-country trip for a family event that brought siblings and cousins from across the globe. Taking the opportunity to show some home town pride, Linwood librarian Maria Moss invited Gaffney to share some personal reflections on “Half Broke,” her first novel that made the New York Times “must read” list in 2020.
That hometown pride was evident everywhere in Linwood on Monday, Sept. 13. Many family members were at the library to support Gaffney and cheer her on. Others came just to hear the author speak about her book, but so many more came to support their Mainland Regional High School girls’ basketball teammate.
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Long before Gaffney was garnering attention as an emerging writer, she was a standout basketball player. A 1980 Mainland graduate, Gaffney scored 340 points her senior year and was a member of the team that was runner-up to Atlantic City High School in South Jersey Group IV. She went on earn a scholarship to play basketball at Guilford College in North Carolina.
Earlier in the evening, extended members of the Gaffney family met at a very familiar spot, All Wars Memorial Park in Linwood where the softball field is named in former Mayor John Gaffney’s honor. The landscaped rock memorializes a gentleman who along with other volunteers pushed to bring softball to Linwood. His four daughters played softball, and he was a coach in the league.
Linwood City Councilwoman June Byrnes, a lifelong friend of the Gaffney family and a teammate at Mainland, said she recently thanked the volunteers on the Linwood Recreation Board for their hard work and used the Gaffney family as my example of how their involvement now can last a lifetime.
Gaffney was a bit shy as she began speaking to her family, friends and fans at the library but quickly found her stride, easily sharing details of the characters in this very personal story.
As the author explained, she is a horse trainer and has found happiness working with half-broken horses and half-broken people in New Mexico. “Half Broke” starts with a phone call from nearby Delancey Street ranch where the residents living there are ex-convicts and recovering drug addicts trying to find a way to stay clean. The desperate call was to get Gaffney’s help with horses on the ranch.
“Not once in my life, had I heard of horses acting like this: scavenging, marauding, war parties of horses. I didn’t think it could be true, and if it was, I certainly needed to see it,” she said. “I wanted to help them, but I had to wait for them to reach out to me and when they did, I wanted to see what I could do to help the horses so that the people living there could learn to work with them.”
Gaffney is a fine craftsman and her detailed use of descriptive words evoke emotion of the struggle going on between horse and rider and the struggles of the individual with themselves. The book is beautifully written and difficult to put down. She is nearing completion of her second novel with the working title “Hungry.”
“Half Broke,” published in 2020 by W.W. Norton is available on Amazon in hard back and paper back as well as on Audible.