Publication
New York : Metropolitan Books, 2017.
Collection
Call number
Biography W
Physical description
xii, 625 p.; 25 cm
Status
Available
Call number
Description
Biography & Autobiography. History. Nonfiction. HTML: The first comprehensive historical biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the beloved author of the Little House on the Prairie book series Millions of readers of Little House on the Prairie believe they know Laura Ingalls-the pioneer girl who survived blizzards and near-starvation on the Great Plains, and the woman who wrote the famous autobiographical books. But the true story of her life has never been fully told. Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser-the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House series-masterfully fills in the gaps in Wilder's biography, setting the record straight regarding charges of ghostwriting that have swirled around the books and uncovering the grown-up story behind the most influential childhood epic of pioneer life. Set against nearly a century of epochal change, from the Homestead Act and the Indian Wars to the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, Wilder's dramatic life provides a unique perspective on American history and our national mythology of self-reliance. Offering fresh insight and new discoveries about Wilder's life and times, Prairie Fires is the definitive book about Wilder and her world. Author bio: Caroline Fraser is the editor of the Library of America edition of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, and the author of Rewilding the World and God's Perfect Child. Her writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, and the London Review of Books, among other publications. She lives in New Mexico..… (more)
Subjects
Media reviews
Placing the Ingalls family’s homesteading mishaps in a bigger picture of national enterprise is one of many demonstrations of Fraser’s admirable commitment to presenting her research in a broader historical context. But sometimes this causes the literary gears to grind. ... And yet there is far
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more to admire than to criticize in Fraser’s determination to provide everything needed for a responsible and thorough history of Wilder’s life and legacy. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member jnwelch
In Prairie Fires, an extremely well-researched, factually dense treatment of Laura Ingalls Wilder's life, Caroline Fraser confirms the underpinnings of the Little House books, and shows how in many ways Wilder's life was harder than even what is shown in those books. Fraser blames much of
My wife and I are reading the Little House books together right now, and are on number 8 of 9. I received Prairie Fires as an ER book. My wife's first question after I finished this was, is Pa the kind of man portrayed in the books? The answer is yes. Wilder loved this gentle, hard-working, violin-playing man dearly, just as Laura does in the books. In fact, wanting to preserve his memory was a primary reason for her writing the novels.
Based on many unpublished materials such as letters and diaries, the book first describes Wilder's early years into her 20s, and the parallels to the novels are extensive, including the sod house in the bank of Plum Creek: the long, hard winter with starvation frighteningly near, and the crop-destroying plague of locusts. Sad occurrences like the loss of Wilder's first son and her brother Freddie are left out of the novels, as are years of financial desperation. Fires, hailstorms, drought, disease, uncooperative weather - the obstacles Wilder and her family overcame present a vivid contrast to our present day concerns.
The second part of the book discusses her developing a writing career later in life, first as a column writer, as well as the role of daughter Rose as her sometime editor and idea contributor. Wilder originally only expected to write the first book, but its popularity led to her writing the others, with the Wilders' on-the-cliff's-edge financial circumstances providing plenty of motivation.
Wilder comes across as a tough, feisty, admirable woman, who believed strongly in individual will and proved it out in her own life. My main disappointment with the book is the excessive treatment of the annoying Rose and her conservative politics. Her role in creating the Little House books is interesting; the rest is not. Overall, this is a well done biography of Wilder that shows her real life was even more challenging than what she describes in her famous books.
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homesteader difficulties in the late 1890s on boosters who over-promised and underestimated the effects of variable rains and other environmental factors. I never watched the tv show, but Fraser wants to dispel the "caricature" of Wilder resulting from it.My wife and I are reading the Little House books together right now, and are on number 8 of 9. I received Prairie Fires as an ER book. My wife's first question after I finished this was, is Pa the kind of man portrayed in the books? The answer is yes. Wilder loved this gentle, hard-working, violin-playing man dearly, just as Laura does in the books. In fact, wanting to preserve his memory was a primary reason for her writing the novels.
Based on many unpublished materials such as letters and diaries, the book first describes Wilder's early years into her 20s, and the parallels to the novels are extensive, including the sod house in the bank of Plum Creek: the long, hard winter with starvation frighteningly near, and the crop-destroying plague of locusts. Sad occurrences like the loss of Wilder's first son and her brother Freddie are left out of the novels, as are years of financial desperation. Fires, hailstorms, drought, disease, uncooperative weather - the obstacles Wilder and her family overcame present a vivid contrast to our present day concerns.
The second part of the book discusses her developing a writing career later in life, first as a column writer, as well as the role of daughter Rose as her sometime editor and idea contributor. Wilder originally only expected to write the first book, but its popularity led to her writing the others, with the Wilders' on-the-cliff's-edge financial circumstances providing plenty of motivation.
Wilder comes across as a tough, feisty, admirable woman, who believed strongly in individual will and proved it out in her own life. My main disappointment with the book is the excessive treatment of the annoying Rose and her conservative politics. Her role in creating the Little House books is interesting; the rest is not. Overall, this is a well done biography of Wilder that shows her real life was even more challenging than what she describes in her famous books.
Show Less
LibraryThing member JoppaThoughts
“[A]s adults, we have come to see that her autobiographical novels were not only fictionalized but brilliantly edited, in a profound act of American myth-making and self-transformation.” ~ Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder is the
That research is one of the book’s greatest strengths. But it is also the book’s greatest weakness.
Wilder was born in 1867 and died just a few days after her 90th birthday in 1957. But Fraser does not confine her story to this timeframe. She starts instead with Edmund Ingalls, Wilder’s ancestor who arrived in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1628.
Through Wilder’s family history, we are introduced Martha Ingalls Allen Carrier, the granddaughter of the Edmund Ingalls, who was accused of witchcraft and hanged at the height of the Salem witch trials in 1692. We also meet Samuel Ingalls, Wilder’s great grandfather, who married Margaret Delano, ancestor of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in the late 1700s.
Finally, we meet Roger MacBride, who comes under Lane's spell in the 1940s, just as her political theology starts to coalesce into the foundation of the American Libertarian movement. In time, MacBride would become Lane’s surrogate son, political disciple (he was the presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party in the 1976 election), sole heir and keeper of the Wilder legacy.
Fraser makes every effort to present Wilder’s story within a larger historical context. But at times, the history lessons interfere with or completely overshadow the underlying narrative.
Wilder lived through both the Panic of 1893 and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. In both cases, Fraser gives a global and environmental context to these disasters. With regard to the Panic of 1893, Fraser writes:
“Across every inhabited continent, just as on the Great Plains, mass land clearing and wheat farming had led to significant drying, exhausting the soils and throwing the fragile ecosystem out of whack. Combined with the market forces controlling distribution, human-caused climate change joined with natural weather patterns to wreak absolute havoc.”
She dives into global weather patterns, the futures market in Chicago, and the global shift from subsistence farming to a market economy that encourages monoculture and determines the price of agricultural products. Fraser places blame for the Panic of 1893 on market forces. But when it comes to the Dust Bowl, she places blame elsewhere:
“[T]he Dust Bowl was no act of god or freak accident of nature. It was one of the worst man-made ecological disasters of all time. Farmers had done this, and they had done it to themselves. It was small farmers, in particular, who were responsible, since they were more likely to cultivate intensively and less likely to employ any form of crop rotation or erosion control.”
Fraser’s vehement assertion that the blame for the Dust Bowl lies with small farmers combined with her failure to mention the role the United States government played in encouraging and rewarding those who settled and cultivated the Great Plains, speaks more to her personal biases as an environmentalist than to the complex assessment of responsibility for the Dust Bowl. Further, she barely touches upon the impact the Panic of 1893 and the Dust Bowl had on Wilder’s life, though it must have been considerable. In failing to address it, Fraser missed a tremendous opportunity to give a more personal account of what it was like to live through those events.
Fraser’s strength is in revealing the false foundation of American mythology, which typically describes the frontier as an uninhabited wilderness. In Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote:
“In the West the land was level, and there were no trees. The grass grew thick and high. There the wild animals wandered and fed as though they were in a pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no people. Only Indians lived there.”
The implication, of course, is that native peoples were less than human. This belief is foundational to the philosophy of Manifest Destiny, which held that it was both inevitable and justifiable for settlers to expand across the North America and bring order to the wilderness.
Wilder’s racism, at least in this context, is hardly surprising. Only by believing that White settlers were destined to bring order to the wilderness, and that native peoples were part of that wilderness, could Wilder justify her family’s decision to take advantage of the Homestead Act. In fact, to write the Little House books, which effectively reframed her childhood into an uplifting epic that would define much of America’s pioneer mythology, Wilder often had to turn a blind eye to her own reality.
In truth, neither Wilder nor her beloved father, Charles Ingalls, always personified the values of “courage, self-reliance, independence, integrity and helpfulness” espoused in her books. Fraser is able to admit to Charles’s shortcomings, including running away from debts, endangering his family, and squatting on land he had no right to:
“The image of Charles Ingalls that emerges from these unsettled early years contains elements of moral ambiguity missing from the portrait his daughter would one day so lovingly polish.”
But Wilder’s own shortcomings are shared more reluctantly and are often accompanied by an explanation. In 1937, in a letter written to her daughter, Wilder rails against the New Deal. She confesses that those struggling financially, “are getting just what they deserve.” She shares her pride in the fact that she no longer needs to repair her old clothes because she has plenty of new ones. Yet, she refuses to give them away. Those who might benefit from her generosity, she complains, “would go on relief before they’d make them over.”
Instead, Wilder lets her husband cut up her old clothes to braid into rag rugs.
Fraser defends Wilder’s behavior, noting that over the course of her life, she had helped support her own family, helped send her sister to college, and was, in turn, often beholden to her own daughter. In explaining Wilder’s behavior, Fraser nearly apologizes for it:
“Exhausted by cross-currents of guilt and resentment, she seemed to have no measure of sympathy left. She could not extend herself further. Her attitude toward the New Deal was hardly unusual, reflecting the convictions of Mansfield and rural farmers across the country. But it was also profoundly, painfully, and ineradicably personal.”
Though reluctant to criticize Wilder, Fraser did not hesitate to condemn Lane. A prolific columnist with little regard for the truth, Lane wrote several serialized biographies of public figures, including Charlie Chaplin, Henry Ford, Herbert Hoover and Jack London, all of whom denounced Lane’s work as largely fabricated. According to Fraser:
“The Lane who emerged during this period had no conscience, was heedless of others’ feelings, and possessed little regard for professional courtesy.”
As Lane got older, she began to publicly express anti-Semitic and racist views, lauding both Hitler and Mussolini. In 1936, she published Credo, a political screed published by the Saturday Evening Post that implied that the New Deal was dangerous to both Democracy and America. The essay set forth the philosophy of individual liberty and self-reliance that would ultimately become the foundation of the Libertarian Party. It was so popular that it was published as a pamphlet titled Give Me Liberty.
Wilder kept copies on hand to send to her readers.
Lane’s political views became more extreme as she got older, and seemed to match her erratic personality. Throughout her adult life, she would suffer bouts of severe depression followed by grand gestures that were frequently beyond her means; she would fly into a rage, berating those who knew her best, and then become desperately helpful in hopes of repairing the relationship. As her behavior and politics became more extreme, she disavowed many of her long-time friends.
Although never offered as a possible explanation for her behavior, it was impossible for me to read about Lane’s life without thinking that she was struggling with mental illness. In many ways, I found her to be a tragic figure more than a contemptible one. And I found it striking that, no matter how extreme her political views became, Wilder always expressed her approval and agreement.
While I enjoyed Prairie Fires, I was often frustrated by the narrative’s lack of focus. The relationship between Wilder and Lane was at the very heart of the Little House books, but it was only touched on tangentially. This, again, seemed like a missed opportunity. As is so often the case with mothers and daughters, Wilder and Lane had a complicated relationship. They were fiercely competitive, and yet completely dependent upon one another. They were creative collaborators, co-conspirators and confidants. They lifted each other up even as they tore each other down. I would have happily sacrificed some of the breadth of this meandering family history for a bit more depth.
★★★
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, a biography by Caroline Fraser, published by Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company, in 2017.
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder is the
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fascinating and sometimes frustrating biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder and, in almost equal measure, her daughter, Rose Lane Wilder. Written by Caroline Fraser, editor of the Library of America edition of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, it is meticulously researched.That research is one of the book’s greatest strengths. But it is also the book’s greatest weakness.
Wilder was born in 1867 and died just a few days after her 90th birthday in 1957. But Fraser does not confine her story to this timeframe. She starts instead with Edmund Ingalls, Wilder’s ancestor who arrived in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1628.
Through Wilder’s family history, we are introduced Martha Ingalls Allen Carrier, the granddaughter of the Edmund Ingalls, who was accused of witchcraft and hanged at the height of the Salem witch trials in 1692. We also meet Samuel Ingalls, Wilder’s great grandfather, who married Margaret Delano, ancestor of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in the late 1700s.
Finally, we meet Roger MacBride, who comes under Lane's spell in the 1940s, just as her political theology starts to coalesce into the foundation of the American Libertarian movement. In time, MacBride would become Lane’s surrogate son, political disciple (he was the presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party in the 1976 election), sole heir and keeper of the Wilder legacy.
Fraser makes every effort to present Wilder’s story within a larger historical context. But at times, the history lessons interfere with or completely overshadow the underlying narrative.
Wilder lived through both the Panic of 1893 and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. In both cases, Fraser gives a global and environmental context to these disasters. With regard to the Panic of 1893, Fraser writes:
“Across every inhabited continent, just as on the Great Plains, mass land clearing and wheat farming had led to significant drying, exhausting the soils and throwing the fragile ecosystem out of whack. Combined with the market forces controlling distribution, human-caused climate change joined with natural weather patterns to wreak absolute havoc.”
She dives into global weather patterns, the futures market in Chicago, and the global shift from subsistence farming to a market economy that encourages monoculture and determines the price of agricultural products. Fraser places blame for the Panic of 1893 on market forces. But when it comes to the Dust Bowl, she places blame elsewhere:
“[T]he Dust Bowl was no act of god or freak accident of nature. It was one of the worst man-made ecological disasters of all time. Farmers had done this, and they had done it to themselves. It was small farmers, in particular, who were responsible, since they were more likely to cultivate intensively and less likely to employ any form of crop rotation or erosion control.”
Fraser’s vehement assertion that the blame for the Dust Bowl lies with small farmers combined with her failure to mention the role the United States government played in encouraging and rewarding those who settled and cultivated the Great Plains, speaks more to her personal biases as an environmentalist than to the complex assessment of responsibility for the Dust Bowl. Further, she barely touches upon the impact the Panic of 1893 and the Dust Bowl had on Wilder’s life, though it must have been considerable. In failing to address it, Fraser missed a tremendous opportunity to give a more personal account of what it was like to live through those events.
Fraser’s strength is in revealing the false foundation of American mythology, which typically describes the frontier as an uninhabited wilderness. In Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote:
“In the West the land was level, and there were no trees. The grass grew thick and high. There the wild animals wandered and fed as though they were in a pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no people. Only Indians lived there.”
The implication, of course, is that native peoples were less than human. This belief is foundational to the philosophy of Manifest Destiny, which held that it was both inevitable and justifiable for settlers to expand across the North America and bring order to the wilderness.
Wilder’s racism, at least in this context, is hardly surprising. Only by believing that White settlers were destined to bring order to the wilderness, and that native peoples were part of that wilderness, could Wilder justify her family’s decision to take advantage of the Homestead Act. In fact, to write the Little House books, which effectively reframed her childhood into an uplifting epic that would define much of America’s pioneer mythology, Wilder often had to turn a blind eye to her own reality.
In truth, neither Wilder nor her beloved father, Charles Ingalls, always personified the values of “courage, self-reliance, independence, integrity and helpfulness” espoused in her books. Fraser is able to admit to Charles’s shortcomings, including running away from debts, endangering his family, and squatting on land he had no right to:
“The image of Charles Ingalls that emerges from these unsettled early years contains elements of moral ambiguity missing from the portrait his daughter would one day so lovingly polish.”
But Wilder’s own shortcomings are shared more reluctantly and are often accompanied by an explanation. In 1937, in a letter written to her daughter, Wilder rails against the New Deal. She confesses that those struggling financially, “are getting just what they deserve.” She shares her pride in the fact that she no longer needs to repair her old clothes because she has plenty of new ones. Yet, she refuses to give them away. Those who might benefit from her generosity, she complains, “would go on relief before they’d make them over.”
Instead, Wilder lets her husband cut up her old clothes to braid into rag rugs.
Fraser defends Wilder’s behavior, noting that over the course of her life, she had helped support her own family, helped send her sister to college, and was, in turn, often beholden to her own daughter. In explaining Wilder’s behavior, Fraser nearly apologizes for it:
“Exhausted by cross-currents of guilt and resentment, she seemed to have no measure of sympathy left. She could not extend herself further. Her attitude toward the New Deal was hardly unusual, reflecting the convictions of Mansfield and rural farmers across the country. But it was also profoundly, painfully, and ineradicably personal.”
Though reluctant to criticize Wilder, Fraser did not hesitate to condemn Lane. A prolific columnist with little regard for the truth, Lane wrote several serialized biographies of public figures, including Charlie Chaplin, Henry Ford, Herbert Hoover and Jack London, all of whom denounced Lane’s work as largely fabricated. According to Fraser:
“The Lane who emerged during this period had no conscience, was heedless of others’ feelings, and possessed little regard for professional courtesy.”
As Lane got older, she began to publicly express anti-Semitic and racist views, lauding both Hitler and Mussolini. In 1936, she published Credo, a political screed published by the Saturday Evening Post that implied that the New Deal was dangerous to both Democracy and America. The essay set forth the philosophy of individual liberty and self-reliance that would ultimately become the foundation of the Libertarian Party. It was so popular that it was published as a pamphlet titled Give Me Liberty.
Wilder kept copies on hand to send to her readers.
Lane’s political views became more extreme as she got older, and seemed to match her erratic personality. Throughout her adult life, she would suffer bouts of severe depression followed by grand gestures that were frequently beyond her means; she would fly into a rage, berating those who knew her best, and then become desperately helpful in hopes of repairing the relationship. As her behavior and politics became more extreme, she disavowed many of her long-time friends.
Although never offered as a possible explanation for her behavior, it was impossible for me to read about Lane’s life without thinking that she was struggling with mental illness. In many ways, I found her to be a tragic figure more than a contemptible one. And I found it striking that, no matter how extreme her political views became, Wilder always expressed her approval and agreement.
While I enjoyed Prairie Fires, I was often frustrated by the narrative’s lack of focus. The relationship between Wilder and Lane was at the very heart of the Little House books, but it was only touched on tangentially. This, again, seemed like a missed opportunity. As is so often the case with mothers and daughters, Wilder and Lane had a complicated relationship. They were fiercely competitive, and yet completely dependent upon one another. They were creative collaborators, co-conspirators and confidants. They lifted each other up even as they tore each other down. I would have happily sacrificed some of the breadth of this meandering family history for a bit more depth.
★★★
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, a biography by Caroline Fraser, published by Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company, in 2017.
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LibraryThing member lauralkeet
It was impossible to grow up in the US in the 1970s and not be familiar with Laura Ingalls Wilder. I loved Wilder’s Little House books, and the make-believe they inspired. So when I learned about this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, I knew I had to read it.
The Little House books presented a
Fraser continues telling the story of Wilder’s life by placing events in historical context, and dispelling romantic notions of “pioneer life” evoked by the novels. Poverty, hunger, and poor living conditions were the norm. The land was poorly suited to farming; both government policy and farming methods were contributing factors to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. I also enjoyed reading about the adult Wilder: the ways she supplemented her family’s farming income, how she became a writer, and the long journey of writing and publishing a series of novels. Wilder’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, was a writer in her own right and instrumental in helping her mother get published; she was also a problematic figure who did not engender any of my sympathies. But Wilder’s story cannot be told without Lane’s, and vice versa.
Towards the end of this book, Fraser turns her attention to contemporary issues surrounding Wilder’s books. Even during her lifetime (Wilder died in 1957), people were attempting discern fact from fiction in the novels, challenging the Wilder/Lane assertion of absolute truth. And then, as 20th-century American society began to grasp the nature of our treatment of Native American populations, some of the stories took on a new light. In 2018, just a few months after the release of Prairie Fires, the American Library Association removed Wilder’s name from its children’s literature award, stating that “her works reflect dated cultural attitudes toward Indigenous people and people of color that contradict modern acceptance, celebration, and understanding of diverse communities.”
The Little House books remain tremendously popular works of children’s literature despite the dissonance with contemporary thought. It’s interesting to learn more about the woman who created this significant body of work.
The Little House books presented a
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sanitized version of life on the American Prairie, glossing over a myriad of social, historic, and economic issues. Caroline Fraser sets the record straight, beginning with a land rush in the 1850s, the 1862 Homestead Act which promised 160 acres to each settler, and the resulting impact on Native American communities which led to the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. Wilder was born in 1867, to parents whose families were settlers during the mid-1800s.Fraser continues telling the story of Wilder’s life by placing events in historical context, and dispelling romantic notions of “pioneer life” evoked by the novels. Poverty, hunger, and poor living conditions were the norm. The land was poorly suited to farming; both government policy and farming methods were contributing factors to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. I also enjoyed reading about the adult Wilder: the ways she supplemented her family’s farming income, how she became a writer, and the long journey of writing and publishing a series of novels. Wilder’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, was a writer in her own right and instrumental in helping her mother get published; she was also a problematic figure who did not engender any of my sympathies. But Wilder’s story cannot be told without Lane’s, and vice versa.
Towards the end of this book, Fraser turns her attention to contemporary issues surrounding Wilder’s books. Even during her lifetime (Wilder died in 1957), people were attempting discern fact from fiction in the novels, challenging the Wilder/Lane assertion of absolute truth. And then, as 20th-century American society began to grasp the nature of our treatment of Native American populations, some of the stories took on a new light. In 2018, just a few months after the release of Prairie Fires, the American Library Association removed Wilder’s name from its children’s literature award, stating that “her works reflect dated cultural attitudes toward Indigenous people and people of color that contradict modern acceptance, celebration, and understanding of diverse communities.”
The Little House books remain tremendously popular works of children’s literature despite the dissonance with contemporary thought. It’s interesting to learn more about the woman who created this significant body of work.
Show Less
LibraryThing member SamSattler
Caroline Fraser's dual autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane is an eye-opener. It is extensive (515 pages of text, plus another 125 pages of footnotes and index) and it is revealing, so revealing in fact, that the most rabid "Little House on the Prairie" fans may
Laura Ingalls Wilder was not a particularly happy person, and she only came to writing her family's story (the books are a blending of fact and fiction well edited by Rose), but her daughter was a troubled soul for her entire life. The relationship between the two was a strained one almost from the time that Rose can remember her mother.
Wilder turned to commercial writing primarily out of necessity - and heavy encouragement from her daughter to do so. She was desperate, in her sixties, to finally find some financial security after a life of losing one home after the other and being forced to move from state to state always hoping to find a better life. And it worked out beautifully despite the little regard that both Wilder and Lane had for sticking to the facts while representing that everything in the books was true. (Even contemporary booksellers found it difficult to know in which section to place the books, Fiction or Non-Fiction.)
Wilder wanted nothing more than to make her father Charles Ingalls appear to be a good provider for his family even though he was not very good at doing that in the real world. Each of her books was written with that one goal always in mind, and with Lane's heavy editing and re-writing, Wilder succeeded in doing just that. But especially after Wilders' death, Lane managed to politicize the books by emphasizing the family's aversion to any kind of government interference in their lives, to taxes, and to government welfare programs. Both Wilder and Lane saw FDR as a mortal enemy and despised his policies. In fact, Lane made a small fortuned writing about her own brand of politics and gained national fame doing so.
Rose Wilder Lane, who seems to have had mental breakdowns several times in her life, even managed to lose the royalty rights to the Little House series to a despicable Connecticut politician, killing the wish of Wilder herself that those monies go to a Missouri library upon Lane's death. That may be the saddest legacy of Lane's rather strange life. Yes, this is an eye-opener, but getting behind the scenes to see "how the sausage is made," usually is.
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find themselves regretting that they read it.Laura Ingalls Wilder was not a particularly happy person, and she only came to writing her family's story (the books are a blending of fact and fiction well edited by Rose), but her daughter was a troubled soul for her entire life. The relationship between the two was a strained one almost from the time that Rose can remember her mother.
Wilder turned to commercial writing primarily out of necessity - and heavy encouragement from her daughter to do so. She was desperate, in her sixties, to finally find some financial security after a life of losing one home after the other and being forced to move from state to state always hoping to find a better life. And it worked out beautifully despite the little regard that both Wilder and Lane had for sticking to the facts while representing that everything in the books was true. (Even contemporary booksellers found it difficult to know in which section to place the books, Fiction or Non-Fiction.)
Wilder wanted nothing more than to make her father Charles Ingalls appear to be a good provider for his family even though he was not very good at doing that in the real world. Each of her books was written with that one goal always in mind, and with Lane's heavy editing and re-writing, Wilder succeeded in doing just that. But especially after Wilders' death, Lane managed to politicize the books by emphasizing the family's aversion to any kind of government interference in their lives, to taxes, and to government welfare programs. Both Wilder and Lane saw FDR as a mortal enemy and despised his policies. In fact, Lane made a small fortuned writing about her own brand of politics and gained national fame doing so.
Rose Wilder Lane, who seems to have had mental breakdowns several times in her life, even managed to lose the royalty rights to the Little House series to a despicable Connecticut politician, killing the wish of Wilder herself that those monies go to a Missouri library upon Lane's death. That may be the saddest legacy of Lane's rather strange life. Yes, this is an eye-opener, but getting behind the scenes to see "how the sausage is made," usually is.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Othemts
Like anyone else who grew up in my generation, I watched and loved the tv series Little House on the Prairie as a kid. In fifth grade we read a section of Laura Ingalls Wilder's book Little House on the Prairie and I was entranced. I immediately read all the books in the Little House series in
Of course, I knew that the books were highly fictionalized stories of Wilder's life and the tv show even more greatly removed from reality. It was interesting to read this biography to learn the true story of Wilder's life. Fraser's research and writing is especially good at establishing Wilder's story in the context of historical events - conflicts with Indians, financial crises and depressions, political movements, and even climate change. The period of Wilder's life covered in her 9 books is just a small portion of her long life and is covered in the first 150 pages of the 500+ page book. For all her romance of life on the Great Plains and the admiration of the rugged individualism of farming, Laura and Alamanzo Wilder were not able to find stability and success in life until they left the West for the South (specifically the Ozarks of Missouri) and found work off the farm.
Laura Ingalls Wilder established herself in Mansfield, MO through her activity in local clubs and working for Farm Loan Asssociation, a federal agency that made small loans to farmers. Wilder also worked as a writer and editor, eventually creating a popular column in a publication called The Ruralist. Wilder's entry into writing was inspired by a key figure in this biography, Rose Wilder Lane, who lived in various parts of the country working as a journalist (albeit specializing in "fake news") and freelance writer, and eventually writing novels and political treatises. Fraser is barely able to contain her contempt for Lane, who admittedly is an awful person, but nevertheless its surprising when someone is so bad that a historian can't keep a neutral tone
Wilder writes the Little House books during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl of the 1930s and early 1940s, with the current events informing her reflections on the past. Since the books were written for children, Wilder naturally sanitized some of the darkest times of her childhood, elided events, and created composite characters. But she also chose to use the books to hide her family's deep poverty and multiple failures while idolizing her parents as exemplars of independence. This means leaving out parts of their lives when Charles Ingalls skipped out of town to avoid a debt or when the family had a miserable time working at a hotel in Iowa.
Lane served as an editor for her mother's writing, and the surviving manuscripts includes notes back and forth, of what to retain and what to cut. Fraser indicates Wilder fought to retain many of her own ideas and writing against Lane's edits and suggestions and the finished novels have the same style as Wilder's handwritten manuscripts. Some scholars believe that Lane ghost wrote some or all of the novels, but Fraser use this evidence to attest that Lane mainly did the editing while writing an occasional interpolation. Lane's increasingly radical right wing, libertarian ideology also influenced her mother's political leanings and the underlying messages of the novels.
Fraser also examines the cultural effect of the Little House stories, both as a response to the New Deal when the books were published and in the post-Nixonian era of the television. In both eras, Little House played the role of offering a rose-tinted view of a patriotic past where Americans took initiative and supported themselves through hard work. Ironically, Wilder created a fictional version of her parents as independent farmers by erasing their poverty, their inability to survive as subsistence farmers, and the times they benefited from help of the government. In fact, if the government is to be blamed for an of the suffering of the Ingalls, Wilders, and thousands of other pioneer farming families it is when they acted on laissez-faire and libertarian policies that someone like Lane would support. Examples include the US government ignoring their own scientist's research that showed the Dakotas should not be opened to farming because it was too arid, and state governments offering little aid to farmers suffering from plagues of locusts and droughts because they did not wish to create "dependency."
This is an excellent work of biography and history. While offering a look at the exceptional life of a successful and beloved author, it also is a glimpse into the lives and dreams of many Americans in some of the most turbulent times in our nation's history. Amazingly the book contains contrasting ideas of what it means to be American and the best way to govern this country that are still relevant to the current political debate. If you love the Little House books, this is a good way to deepen your understanding of their author and the books' place in our culture. But even if you have never read or watched any Little House material, this is still a great biography that I'd recommend.
Favorite Passages:
"The New York Times asked recently, 'Why Do People Who Need Help from the Government Hate It so Much?' It was no mystery to Wilder. As she knew too well, people who are poor are ashamed. It's easier to blame the government than to blame yourself. Wrestling with shame was one of the reasons she wrote her books..." - p. 511
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sequence (except I skipped Farmer Boy because I had no interest in Almanzo). The earlier books were my favorites and I read Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, and On the Banks of Plum Creek multiple times. This was an important time in my life as a reader because up to that point I was rather finicky and found it hard to finish books, especially fiction.Of course, I knew that the books were highly fictionalized stories of Wilder's life and the tv show even more greatly removed from reality. It was interesting to read this biography to learn the true story of Wilder's life. Fraser's research and writing is especially good at establishing Wilder's story in the context of historical events - conflicts with Indians, financial crises and depressions, political movements, and even climate change. The period of Wilder's life covered in her 9 books is just a small portion of her long life and is covered in the first 150 pages of the 500+ page book. For all her romance of life on the Great Plains and the admiration of the rugged individualism of farming, Laura and Alamanzo Wilder were not able to find stability and success in life until they left the West for the South (specifically the Ozarks of Missouri) and found work off the farm.
Laura Ingalls Wilder established herself in Mansfield, MO through her activity in local clubs and working for Farm Loan Asssociation, a federal agency that made small loans to farmers. Wilder also worked as a writer and editor, eventually creating a popular column in a publication called The Ruralist. Wilder's entry into writing was inspired by a key figure in this biography, Rose Wilder Lane, who lived in various parts of the country working as a journalist (albeit specializing in "fake news") and freelance writer, and eventually writing novels and political treatises. Fraser is barely able to contain her contempt for Lane, who admittedly is an awful person, but nevertheless its surprising when someone is so bad that a historian can't keep a neutral tone
Wilder writes the Little House books during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl of the 1930s and early 1940s, with the current events informing her reflections on the past. Since the books were written for children, Wilder naturally sanitized some of the darkest times of her childhood, elided events, and created composite characters. But she also chose to use the books to hide her family's deep poverty and multiple failures while idolizing her parents as exemplars of independence. This means leaving out parts of their lives when Charles Ingalls skipped out of town to avoid a debt or when the family had a miserable time working at a hotel in Iowa.
Lane served as an editor for her mother's writing, and the surviving manuscripts includes notes back and forth, of what to retain and what to cut. Fraser indicates Wilder fought to retain many of her own ideas and writing against Lane's edits and suggestions and the finished novels have the same style as Wilder's handwritten manuscripts. Some scholars believe that Lane ghost wrote some or all of the novels, but Fraser use this evidence to attest that Lane mainly did the editing while writing an occasional interpolation. Lane's increasingly radical right wing, libertarian ideology also influenced her mother's political leanings and the underlying messages of the novels.
Fraser also examines the cultural effect of the Little House stories, both as a response to the New Deal when the books were published and in the post-Nixonian era of the television. In both eras, Little House played the role of offering a rose-tinted view of a patriotic past where Americans took initiative and supported themselves through hard work. Ironically, Wilder created a fictional version of her parents as independent farmers by erasing their poverty, their inability to survive as subsistence farmers, and the times they benefited from help of the government. In fact, if the government is to be blamed for an of the suffering of the Ingalls, Wilders, and thousands of other pioneer farming families it is when they acted on laissez-faire and libertarian policies that someone like Lane would support. Examples include the US government ignoring their own scientist's research that showed the Dakotas should not be opened to farming because it was too arid, and state governments offering little aid to farmers suffering from plagues of locusts and droughts because they did not wish to create "dependency."
This is an excellent work of biography and history. While offering a look at the exceptional life of a successful and beloved author, it also is a glimpse into the lives and dreams of many Americans in some of the most turbulent times in our nation's history. Amazingly the book contains contrasting ideas of what it means to be American and the best way to govern this country that are still relevant to the current political debate. If you love the Little House books, this is a good way to deepen your understanding of their author and the books' place in our culture. But even if you have never read or watched any Little House material, this is still a great biography that I'd recommend.
Favorite Passages:
"The New York Times asked recently, 'Why Do People Who Need Help from the Government Hate It so Much?' It was no mystery to Wilder. As she knew too well, people who are poor are ashamed. It's easier to blame the government than to blame yourself. Wrestling with shame was one of the reasons she wrote her books..." - p. 511
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LibraryThing member BlueGiraffe
Never out of print, made into a television show, Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books are a well-known part of American culture. If you've read "Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Biography" you may not think "Prairie Fires" would have anything left to tell. But it does, very much so. Caroline
And there's so much here you've never read before, or perhaps you've read something in Wilder's books or about her life, but not really understood the ramifications of it. I, as an example, never realized how truly poor the Wilder family was, nor how dependent they were on others for the betterment of their lives. Fraser points out how much the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" philosophy stated in Wilder's books is in contrast to all the help they got: free land from the government, clothing from missionary barrels, help from friends and neighbors. And Pa, the upstanding citizen? Well, there was that midnight flight from the debts he owed in Iowa. Funny how that never made it into the books. Which brings me to another excellent aspect of Fraser's work: the actual writing of Wilder's books. The tug of war between daughter (and oh, my! What a difficult and unlikable person she was!) and mother over what to write and how to present Laura's pioneer experiences is examined in depth. That's quite a fascinating story.
While discussing difficult and hard truths, Fraser never loses respect for Wilder's work and shows great understanding of her times and character. If you'd like to read a well-researched, very accessible book that not only puts Wilder's life and work in historical context and perspective, but also lets you come as close to the real Laura as you'll ever get, this is that book. Highly recommended for those with an interest in Wilder's books or the history of the American west.
I received a copy from the publisher as part of the Library Thing Early Reviewers program.
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Fraser has done a tremendous amount of research in order to provide historical context for Laura Ingalls Wilder's life and writing. And there's so much here you've never read before, or perhaps you've read something in Wilder's books or about her life, but not really understood the ramifications of it. I, as an example, never realized how truly poor the Wilder family was, nor how dependent they were on others for the betterment of their lives. Fraser points out how much the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" philosophy stated in Wilder's books is in contrast to all the help they got: free land from the government, clothing from missionary barrels, help from friends and neighbors. And Pa, the upstanding citizen? Well, there was that midnight flight from the debts he owed in Iowa. Funny how that never made it into the books. Which brings me to another excellent aspect of Fraser's work: the actual writing of Wilder's books. The tug of war between daughter (and oh, my! What a difficult and unlikable person she was!) and mother over what to write and how to present Laura's pioneer experiences is examined in depth. That's quite a fascinating story.
While discussing difficult and hard truths, Fraser never loses respect for Wilder's work and shows great understanding of her times and character. If you'd like to read a well-researched, very accessible book that not only puts Wilder's life and work in historical context and perspective, but also lets you come as close to the real Laura as you'll ever get, this is that book. Highly recommended for those with an interest in Wilder's books or the history of the American west.
I received a copy from the publisher as part of the Library Thing Early Reviewers program.
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LibraryThing member briandrewz
Prairie Fires is the real story of Laura Ingalls Wilder. The author sets the events of Laura's life against the backdrop of the times she lived in. She explains how various land acts, economic depressions, and natural disasters shaped the way the Ingalls family moved about. It's interesting, though
I found that this wasn't just a biography of Laura. It is, in fact, a dual biography, encompassing Laura's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, as well. I believe this detracts greatly from the book. There is some interest in the strained relationship between Laura and Rose. It was information I hadn't known about. But the other particulars of Rose's life (her travels abroad, her proteges, her building projects, her own literary career), seemed to take away from the book. The book should have been billed as a dual biography. Another negative is that the author never called Laura or Rose by their first names, always referring to them as "Wilder" and "Lane".
For those interested in the lives of both women, this is a worthwhile book. But if you're looking for a story about just Laura, look elsewhere.
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at times can bore the reader in its detail.I found that this wasn't just a biography of Laura. It is, in fact, a dual biography, encompassing Laura's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, as well. I believe this detracts greatly from the book. There is some interest in the strained relationship between Laura and Rose. It was information I hadn't known about. But the other particulars of Rose's life (her travels abroad, her proteges, her building projects, her own literary career), seemed to take away from the book. The book should have been billed as a dual biography. Another negative is that the author never called Laura or Rose by their first names, always referring to them as "Wilder" and "Lane".
For those interested in the lives of both women, this is a worthwhile book. But if you're looking for a story about just Laura, look elsewhere.
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LibraryThing member LyndaInOregon
Overlong and over-ambitious, this book attempts several tasks -- a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the "Little House on the Prairie" series; a biography of her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane; the difficult and complex relationship between the two; conflicts over authorship of the series;
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and -- as if that weren't enough -- a social history of the country from the 1870s through WWII and beyond. No wonder it's an exhausting read. Show Less
LibraryThing member antao
I am well into “Prairie Fires” by Caroline Fraser, a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder who is best known as the author of the Little House children’s books. I have not read these books nor have I seen what I believe to have been a rather saccharine TV series “The Little House on the
Ingalls Wilder lived until 1957 having become famous and comfortably well off, but her early life, part of which was lived in a mud cave dug into a river bank, is an extraordinary tale of transition from extreme poverty and isolation to mid twentieth century affluence.
For a working definition of the term “The American Dream” you could do worse than read Caroline Fraser’s book. She also gives substantial and sympathetic consideration to the oft-betrayed and dislocated Native Americans whose traditional lands were routinely confiscated even after the government had signed treaties pledging to keep the settlers away.
For the last word on the broken dreams of westward pioneers you need Jonathan Raban’s “Bad Land.” An unqualified masterpiece.
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Prairie.” I have a more general interest in the early settlement of the American West and the complex set of relationships between the government which wanted the west populated but which was largely indifferent to the plight of early settlers who had been encouraged to go and farm in what would now be considered hopelessly unsuitable locations, the railway barons who strongly boosted these desert areas in order to gouge money out of the hapless immigrants (which many of them were) and the pioneers themselves whose optimism in the face of ludicrous odds is a miracle of hope over expectation.Ingalls Wilder lived until 1957 having become famous and comfortably well off, but her early life, part of which was lived in a mud cave dug into a river bank, is an extraordinary tale of transition from extreme poverty and isolation to mid twentieth century affluence.
For a working definition of the term “The American Dream” you could do worse than read Caroline Fraser’s book. She also gives substantial and sympathetic consideration to the oft-betrayed and dislocated Native Americans whose traditional lands were routinely confiscated even after the government had signed treaties pledging to keep the settlers away.
For the last word on the broken dreams of westward pioneers you need Jonathan Raban’s “Bad Land.” An unqualified masterpiece.
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LibraryThing member Maydacat
For those readers who think they know Laura Ingalls Wilder from her books and other writings, this comprehensive biography may be a bit of a shocker. Through extensive research, author Caroline Fraser presents a Laura previously unknown. This is not the Laura of the prairie stories; rather it is a
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girl born into hardship, living from one disaster to another, first as a child whose parents’ hard work on the brink of succeeding only resulted in losing everything time and again, and then as an adult, coping day to day and year to year, and reveling in familial relationships, only to fail in some of the ones dearest to her. Fraser does a masterful job of painting the scenes of the time periods, describing the natural disasters that plagued farmers, including crop failures due to locust and dust storms, as well as the political arena. She goes on the describe in painstaking detail the relationships Laura had with her beloved parents and the problems she endured with her daughter Rose. Spanning a time from pioneers to plane travelers, through periods of great deprivation, and finally, to a recognition of and rewards for Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved writings, this chronicle illustrates clearly the worst and the best of Wilder’s life. Show Less
LibraryThing member brangwinn
Wow, with LOTS of detail, the real world of Laura Ingalls Wilder is explored.
LibraryThing member ladycato
I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.
When I visited Laura Ingalls Wilder's farmhouse and museum in Mansfield, Missouri, last year, it felt like a pilgrimage to me. Seeing Pa's fiddle, walking where Laura walked, was a soul-deep experience for me. Her Little House
I have read several biographies of Wilder over the past two years, including the annotated version of her original, truer-to-life manuscript, Pioneer Girl. Fraser's work is the most comprehensive book by far, encompassing the lives of Laura's parents and extending after her death to the actions of her daughter and the evolution of her literary estate. The amount of research involved is staggering. It's well known that the Little House books deviated from reality in major ways, and that Rose Wilder Lane was a major collaborative force in bringing the "juveniles" to publication. Sorting through the muddled mess of half-truths could be confusing, but Fraser lays out the facts through primary source materials, manuscripts and letters. The book is quite long; the galley is over 500 pages, plus citations, but it's a fast, intriguing read for people like me who are already invested in Wilder's world.
The only challenge in the book is not the author's fault at all, but the dominating, bipolar presence of Rose Wilder Lane. She cannot be separated from her mother's legacy; she had too great a role in developing the books, and her influence on her mother is undeniable. But my gosh, Lane is exhausting to read about. She was mentally ill, vacillating between suicidal depression and manic spending sprees, and as she grew older her extreme politics took on a sinister bent. If she were alive today, she would she an alt right troll on Twitter.
Fraser doesn't shy away from showing how Lane's politics--and Wilder's--evolved through the ends of their lives. It's not a pretty truth; actually, it's rather infuriating to see how Wilder's celebration of the can-do American farming experience was so far from reality. Her family was persistently poor. They settled on Kansas land they had no right to. They slipped out of Burr Oak, Iowa, in the dead of night to evade debt. Wilder's sisters and mother died, still utterly stricken by poverty. Wilder was only secure at the end because of her book sales, as her Missouri farm had always hovered at the edge of failure, too, intermittently blessed and damned by Lane's financial whims.
While this book will be enlightening for anyone who loves Wilder's work, it should be regarded as a vital read for anyone with an interest in American history from 1860 onward. It presents on honest, brutal assessment of what Native Americans endured in Minnesota and beyond, the realities of farming, the interplay of politics on local and national levels, and how the west was settled--and unsettled in our modern era of oil pipelines and fracking.
When I visited Laura Ingalls Wilder's farmhouse and museum in Mansfield, Missouri, last year, it felt like a pilgrimage to me. Seeing Pa's fiddle, walking where Laura walked, was a soul-deep experience for me. Her Little House
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books had a major impact on my life and making me the author I am today.I have read several biographies of Wilder over the past two years, including the annotated version of her original, truer-to-life manuscript, Pioneer Girl. Fraser's work is the most comprehensive book by far, encompassing the lives of Laura's parents and extending after her death to the actions of her daughter and the evolution of her literary estate. The amount of research involved is staggering. It's well known that the Little House books deviated from reality in major ways, and that Rose Wilder Lane was a major collaborative force in bringing the "juveniles" to publication. Sorting through the muddled mess of half-truths could be confusing, but Fraser lays out the facts through primary source materials, manuscripts and letters. The book is quite long; the galley is over 500 pages, plus citations, but it's a fast, intriguing read for people like me who are already invested in Wilder's world.
The only challenge in the book is not the author's fault at all, but the dominating, bipolar presence of Rose Wilder Lane. She cannot be separated from her mother's legacy; she had too great a role in developing the books, and her influence on her mother is undeniable. But my gosh, Lane is exhausting to read about. She was mentally ill, vacillating between suicidal depression and manic spending sprees, and as she grew older her extreme politics took on a sinister bent. If she were alive today, she would she an alt right troll on Twitter.
Fraser doesn't shy away from showing how Lane's politics--and Wilder's--evolved through the ends of their lives. It's not a pretty truth; actually, it's rather infuriating to see how Wilder's celebration of the can-do American farming experience was so far from reality. Her family was persistently poor. They settled on Kansas land they had no right to. They slipped out of Burr Oak, Iowa, in the dead of night to evade debt. Wilder's sisters and mother died, still utterly stricken by poverty. Wilder was only secure at the end because of her book sales, as her Missouri farm had always hovered at the edge of failure, too, intermittently blessed and damned by Lane's financial whims.
While this book will be enlightening for anyone who loves Wilder's work, it should be regarded as a vital read for anyone with an interest in American history from 1860 onward. It presents on honest, brutal assessment of what Native Americans endured in Minnesota and beyond, the realities of farming, the interplay of politics on local and national levels, and how the west was settled--and unsettled in our modern era of oil pipelines and fracking.
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LibraryThing member olegalCA
Totally fascinating biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the story behind the writing of the Little House books. Some of the information, especially about her early life, I had read before in Donald Zochert's work, Laura, but the second half of the book was new to me. I loved reading about the
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relationship between Laura and her daughter, Rose, and the way their politics influenced their writing. I'm not sure I would have been friends with them, mostly due to their attitude towards the poor (strange considering Laura was poor for most of her life) but it was fascinating nonetheless. Show Less
LibraryThing member LauraBrook
If you're a fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder, add this book to your "Must Buy" list!
Interesting and comprehensive, this was a fascinating trip through the lives of Laura Ingalls and her daughter Rose. I knew most of the highlights from Laura's life, and a few from Rose's, but the rest? All new
Interesting and comprehensive, this was a fascinating trip through the lives of Laura Ingalls and her daughter Rose. I knew most of the highlights from Laura's life, and a few from Rose's, but the rest? All new
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information! It's jam-packed with curious tidbits and the unvarnished truth about how Laura and her family really lived (including some info about what was going on elsewhere in the US, which I appreciated), and while it took the shine off of this beloved childhood favorite just a bit, I'll always love the stories. Kudos to Caroline Fraser for her outstanding research! Adult me is very grateful for this book! Now excuse me while I go and reread the series. Show Less
LibraryThing member nyiper
I think I'm now horrified ----as a child I really loved the series but now, frankly, I'm disgusted. No, that's not fair. Maybe it's the daughter, Rose, that I really could not stand!!! The book is LONG and extremely detailed and I'm totally impressed with all the work Fraser had to do to organize
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so much material in such a thoroughly readable form. I really could not resist reading it thoroughly even though I kept thinking I wanted to SKIM because the book began to make me so upset with the political background of these women which influenced so much of what they did and wrote. It's probably a sign of the times that this history could upset MY reading history even now! Fraser presents all of this as it fit into what was going on all around the living and writing of the series. It is truly fascinating and really provides a great way to look at the past from a different perspective than is presented in a history book. Show Less
LibraryThing member gpangel
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser is a 2017
Metropolitan Books publication.
‘All that I have told is true, but it is not the whole truth’
This is an incredible autobiography of the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder of ‘The Little House on Prairie’ fame.
To say this book on Wilder's life is comprehensive would be an understatement. Caroline Fraser paints a vivid portrait of the beloved author, but still preserves the respect for her novels that have entertained many of us for generations.
As a child, I read the ‘Little House’ books over and over again, and of course, I tuned in once a week to watch the television show. (Until it got too soapy and I started to outgrow it)
So, naturally, when I saw this book, I knew I had to have it. As it has been pointed out, the books Wilder wrote were a fictionalized accounting of her childhood. This leaves one to wonder about Wilder’s life, beyond her childhood and marriage, and what information she may have glossed over while writing her books, which were primarily a hit among children.
With over six hundred pages, this book was not only a very detailed, extensive look, at Laura Ingalls Wilder, but the historical evolutions that took place during her life.
I won’t go into the details provided in the book, as you will want to read those for yourselves, but I will say I was very taken aback by some of the historical details, by some of the antics Charles Ingalls, Laura's father, got up to, and some of Wilder’s attitudes towards those in a worse situation than her own, as well as how political she and her daughter, Rose, often were.
A great deal of time is spent on Rose Lane, Wilder’s only surviving child, and their complicated relationship. I had never heard any of this information and found myself riveted by the stark differences between the two women, and Rose's bold, selfish manipulations.
I simply can not fathom the amount of time and work the author must have put into this book. Not only does she dig deeply into Wilder’s life, giving us one of the most in -depth studies of her struggles and opinions, thus allowing the most realistic and insightful view of who this woman really was, and the impact her daughter has on the public persona we’ve embraced up until this moment, but she also researched the historical eras Wilder lived through, providing a striking look at the harsh life many were subjected to, barely able to survive, and the complicated land agreements that displaced many Native Americans.
The failures and disasters came around far more than the triumphs. It wasn’t until Wilder was in her fifties and sixties that her writing career took off.
Although this book is almost encyclopedic, and may look as though it would be dry reading, and does seem daunting, with its ‘door stop’ weightiness, I found it was very absorbing and the pages seem to zoom by. Even so, it did take a while to read through it. There are lots of notes and I tend to skim over all that, but it is nice to have the information available for future reference. There are several wonderful photos of the Ingalls/Wilder family, of Laura, and of Rose, who plays a large role in this book.
Overall, I must say this book was much more than I bargained for. It is very, very well researched, and as such, I learned a great deal from it, and despite the risk of disillusionment, I found Laura Ingalls Wilder to be quite an interesting person. She was a hard worker, often carrying the weight of her family on her shoulders, and like all of us to varying degrees, complex, difficult, and at times I didn’t care for her attitude, while at others I admired her temerity, and her ability to staunchly weather all the hardships life through onto her path. I didn’t always understand her point of view, didn’t always agree with her choices, and found Rose Lane to be a real pain, but at the end of the day, this biography is one of the best I’ve ever read.
Even if you are not a fan of the ‘Little House’ books, the historical aspects alone are worth giving the book a try. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading history, and of course for those who would like to know the real truth about Laura Ingalls Wilder.
5 stars
Metropolitan Books publication.
‘All that I have told is true, but it is not the whole truth’
This is an incredible autobiography of the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder of ‘The Little House on Prairie’ fame.
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To say this book on Wilder's life is comprehensive would be an understatement. Caroline Fraser paints a vivid portrait of the beloved author, but still preserves the respect for her novels that have entertained many of us for generations.
As a child, I read the ‘Little House’ books over and over again, and of course, I tuned in once a week to watch the television show. (Until it got too soapy and I started to outgrow it)
So, naturally, when I saw this book, I knew I had to have it. As it has been pointed out, the books Wilder wrote were a fictionalized accounting of her childhood. This leaves one to wonder about Wilder’s life, beyond her childhood and marriage, and what information she may have glossed over while writing her books, which were primarily a hit among children.
With over six hundred pages, this book was not only a very detailed, extensive look, at Laura Ingalls Wilder, but the historical evolutions that took place during her life.
I won’t go into the details provided in the book, as you will want to read those for yourselves, but I will say I was very taken aback by some of the historical details, by some of the antics Charles Ingalls, Laura's father, got up to, and some of Wilder’s attitudes towards those in a worse situation than her own, as well as how political she and her daughter, Rose, often were.
A great deal of time is spent on Rose Lane, Wilder’s only surviving child, and their complicated relationship. I had never heard any of this information and found myself riveted by the stark differences between the two women, and Rose's bold, selfish manipulations.
I simply can not fathom the amount of time and work the author must have put into this book. Not only does she dig deeply into Wilder’s life, giving us one of the most in -depth studies of her struggles and opinions, thus allowing the most realistic and insightful view of who this woman really was, and the impact her daughter has on the public persona we’ve embraced up until this moment, but she also researched the historical eras Wilder lived through, providing a striking look at the harsh life many were subjected to, barely able to survive, and the complicated land agreements that displaced many Native Americans.
The failures and disasters came around far more than the triumphs. It wasn’t until Wilder was in her fifties and sixties that her writing career took off.
Although this book is almost encyclopedic, and may look as though it would be dry reading, and does seem daunting, with its ‘door stop’ weightiness, I found it was very absorbing and the pages seem to zoom by. Even so, it did take a while to read through it. There are lots of notes and I tend to skim over all that, but it is nice to have the information available for future reference. There are several wonderful photos of the Ingalls/Wilder family, of Laura, and of Rose, who plays a large role in this book.
Overall, I must say this book was much more than I bargained for. It is very, very well researched, and as such, I learned a great deal from it, and despite the risk of disillusionment, I found Laura Ingalls Wilder to be quite an interesting person. She was a hard worker, often carrying the weight of her family on her shoulders, and like all of us to varying degrees, complex, difficult, and at times I didn’t care for her attitude, while at others I admired her temerity, and her ability to staunchly weather all the hardships life through onto her path. I didn’t always understand her point of view, didn’t always agree with her choices, and found Rose Lane to be a real pain, but at the end of the day, this biography is one of the best I’ve ever read.
Even if you are not a fan of the ‘Little House’ books, the historical aspects alone are worth giving the book a try. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading history, and of course for those who would like to know the real truth about Laura Ingalls Wilder.
5 stars
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LibraryThing member sallylou61
This could be considered a joint biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, there is so much information about Lane. This detailed study begins with a brief history of Laura's ancestors and ends following Rose's death and the status of the estates of Laura and Rose. The
Several times Ms. Fraser discusses photographs, which do not appear in the book itself. Also, her habit of referring to Laura as Wilder instead of Laura when writing about her as an adult was a bit confusing at first since I considered Wilder to be Almanzo; however, I got used to this feature. Ms. Fraser also referred to Rose as Lane and a few other women by their married surnames.
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uniqueness of this book is its coverage of Laura's adult life between her childhood and the writing of the Little House books, a discussion of her adult political beliefs, and information about her relationship with her husband, Almanzo Wilder after their marriage. Many other LIW books cover her childhood and her writing of her children's books (including the conflicts between LIW and RWL concerning their writings). I was not surprised that this book paints a very unfavorable portrait of Rose Wilder Lane since Ms. Fraser has an article in [Pioneer Girl Perspectives] which portrayed her dishonesty. However, I think this book gives a very balanced account of the lives and views of both women.Several times Ms. Fraser discusses photographs, which do not appear in the book itself. Also, her habit of referring to Laura as Wilder instead of Laura when writing about her as an adult was a bit confusing at first since I considered Wilder to be Almanzo; however, I got used to this feature. Ms. Fraser also referred to Rose as Lane and a few other women by their married surnames.
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LibraryThing member rivkat
Biography of Wilder and her daughter/editor Rose, who seems to have been a truly unpleasant person who loved to decry the New Deal. Wilder glossed over a lot of the bad stuff in her life, especially the financial insecurity that plagued her and ultimately led her to write the Little House books.
LibraryThing member cubsfan3410
This is a detailed, interesting read. This not only a look into Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life, but at historical events during her life and how they related to her life.
LibraryThing member rosechimera
This has a tag of NYT 10 Best Books of 2017. I think it supercedes that. It is incredibly interesting while maintaining a scholarly thoroughness. Even if you have a good grasp of US history, this book will give you a contextual and intimate understanding. Pairs nicely with my concurrent read of
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"Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI". Show Less
LibraryThing member rosechimera
This has a tag of NYT 10 Best Books of 2017. I think it supercedes that. It is incredibly interesting while maintaining a scholarly thoroughness. Even if you have a good grasp of US history, this book will give you a contextual and intimate understanding. Pairs nicely with my concurrent read of
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"Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI". Show Less
LibraryThing member maryreinert
There is so much more in “Prairie Fires” than a history or biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder; it is a cultural history of a time and place not often honestly told. The frontier and pioneer stories of the Little House books are well known. However, this is a rarely told view of the frontier and
The Little House books paint a picture of loving brave families, beautiful vast landscapes, innocent fun, strong self-reliance, and honest hard work, and there is definitely a truth in that picture. But behind that and just as much of a truth is hardship, selfishness, exploitation, and heartbreak. The author does a great job in combining those threads into the story of the real Ingalls and Wilder families and the relationship between family members and the relationships between that family and the culture of the time.
Rose Wilder Lane, the only daughter of Laura, is an equal focus of the book. Laura may have experienced the adventures and misfortunes of the frontier, but those stories would not have been so imaginatively told if it had not been for Rose. Rose’s political and cultural experiences and influences make for fascinating reading. Libertarianism as a political ideology becomes clear in the story of Laura and Rose.
“Prairie Fires” is a well-researched book that is much more than the story of a children’s book series.
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the small towns of the mid-west. Additionally, it is the story of family relationships: siblings, daughter and parents, mother and daughter. The Little House books paint a picture of loving brave families, beautiful vast landscapes, innocent fun, strong self-reliance, and honest hard work, and there is definitely a truth in that picture. But behind that and just as much of a truth is hardship, selfishness, exploitation, and heartbreak. The author does a great job in combining those threads into the story of the real Ingalls and Wilder families and the relationship between family members and the relationships between that family and the culture of the time.
Rose Wilder Lane, the only daughter of Laura, is an equal focus of the book. Laura may have experienced the adventures and misfortunes of the frontier, but those stories would not have been so imaginatively told if it had not been for Rose. Rose’s political and cultural experiences and influences make for fascinating reading. Libertarianism as a political ideology becomes clear in the story of Laura and Rose.
“Prairie Fires” is a well-researched book that is much more than the story of a children’s book series.
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LibraryThing member book58lover
Fraser does an absolutely incredible job fleshing out the real Laura Ingalls Wilder. If you are thinking "Half Pint" forget it. The real Wilder is much more complex in her relationships, particularly with her daughter Rose who figures largely in the book. She lionizes her father but barely talks
But I must confess that Rose Lane comes off thoroughly unlikable and although a renowned author in her own right, dependent on the symbiotic relationship with her mother. She was a central part of Wilder's life from her birth, floating in and out of the family home, creating havoc in her wake. This disastrous relationship did foster the work on the series so in that sense was necessary, just not always pleasant.
History is not always neat and biography is even more tricky. These lives were not the stuff of the television show, much to my chagrin. But the author does such an admirable job that even in the disappointing parts of their lives I am thankful for the truth.
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about Mary, Frederick or Grace. Facts are twisted or forgotten to further the sanitizing of the family story. It was no wonder that librarians and the reading public couldn't decide if the books were fiction or biography. Fraser digs into that using letters and articles written by Wilder and Rose Lane. This must have been a project of many, many years because the footnotes are extensive, involving a vast knowledge of their works and their working together to produce the iconic series.But I must confess that Rose Lane comes off thoroughly unlikable and although a renowned author in her own right, dependent on the symbiotic relationship with her mother. She was a central part of Wilder's life from her birth, floating in and out of the family home, creating havoc in her wake. This disastrous relationship did foster the work on the series so in that sense was necessary, just not always pleasant.
History is not always neat and biography is even more tricky. These lives were not the stuff of the television show, much to my chagrin. But the author does such an admirable job that even in the disappointing parts of their lives I am thankful for the truth.
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LibraryThing member chrirob
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser - This is a very good biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Other than Donald Zochert's book Laura: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder, this is one of the most comprehensive of her life. This book has a lot of history not only
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of the Ingalls and Wilder families, but of the time periods in which they lived. Meticulously researched, this book is a must for Little House or Wilder fans. Also, side note, it is interesting to read this book about the Laura-Rose Little House collaboration and then read Ghost in the Little House by William Holtz...two very different perspectives on these two women and their collaboration. Read them both! They are both really good books! Thank you LibraryThing for the early reviewers copy of this book! Loved it! Show Less
LibraryThing member Cherylk
I can remember reading the Little House on the Prairie books as well as watching the show. I like many other girls probably dreamed of being Laura. Yet, I don't know much about who the real Laura behind the inspiration truly is.
Well I can tell you that this book gave me tons of details about
Well I can tell you that this book gave me tons of details about
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Laura. Who she was, where she came from, her childhood, and so much more. Yet, there comes a point when too much information can be a hindrance. This is what happened with me. It got to the point that I was on overload and could not process anymore information. Now, maybe if the information did not see to be repetitive this would have helped. I could not take anymore information; thus, I had enough reading. I could not finish this book. Show Less
Awards
Pulitzer Prize (Winner — Biography — 2018)
National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist — Biography — 2017)
Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize (Non-Fiction — 2018)
Cundill History Prize (Finalist — 2018)
Plutarch Award (Winner — 2018)
Boston Globe Best Book (Nonfiction — 2017)
The New York Times Notable Books of the Year (Nonfiction — 2017)
The New York Times Best Books of the Year (Nonfiction — 2017)
Language
Original publication date
2017
ISBN
9781627792769