Prairie fires : the American dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder

Part I: The pioneer -- Maiden rock -- Indian summers -- Crying hard times -- God hates a coward -- Don't leave the farm, boys -- Part II: The exile -- A world made -- As a farm woman thinks -- The absent ones -- Pioneer girl -- Part III: The dream -- A ruined country -- Dusty old dust -- We are all here -- Sunshine and shadow -- There is gold in the farm.

Summary:

"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 saga 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 Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser--the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House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. Revealing the grown-up story behind the most influential childhood epic of pioneer life, she also chronicles Wilder's tumultuous relationship with her journalist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, setting the record straight regarding charges of ghostwriting that have swirled around the books." -- Publisher's description

Format:

Book

Award:

Pulitzer Prize, Biography, 2018.

Length:

xii, 625 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates :

Copies:

Available:*

Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
Biography	BIOGRAPHY W6725f	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable
Biography	BIOGRAPHY W6725f	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

The first comprehensive historical biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the beloved author of the Little House on the Prairie books

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 saga 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 Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser--the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House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. Revealing the grown-up story behind the most influential childhood epic of pioneer life, she also chronicles Wilder's tumultuous relationship with her journalist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, setting the record straight regarding charges of ghostwriting that have swirled around the books.

The Little House books, for all the hardships they describe, are paeans to the pioneer spirit, portraying it as triumphant against all odds. But Wilder's real life was harder and grittier than that, a story of relentless struggle, rootlessness, and poverty. It was only in her sixties, after losing nearly everything in the Great Depression, that she turned to children's books, recasting her hardscrabble childhood as a celebratory vision of homesteading--and achieving fame and fortune in the process, in one of the most astonishing rags-to-riches episodes in American letters.

Spanning nearly a century of epochal change, from the Indian Wars to the Dust Bowl, Wilder's dramatic life provides a unique perspective on American history and our national mythology of self-reliance. With fresh insights and new discoveries, Prairie Fires reveals the complex woman whose classic stories grip us to this day.

Author Notes

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.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

The autobiographical Little House on the Prairie novels by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957) occupy a curious space between national mythology, self-reinvention, and truth, as this overlong but engrossing biography from Fraser (Rewilding the World) makes clear. Lovers of the series will delight in learning about real-life counterparts to classic fictional episodes, but, as Fraser emphasizes, the true story was often much harsher. Meticulously tracing the Ingalls and Wilder families' experiences through public records and private documents, Fraser discovers failed farm ventures and constant money problems, as well as natural disasters even more terrifying and devastating in real life than in Wilder's writing. She also helpfully puts Wilder's narrow world into larger historical context, showing that the books' self-sufficient farmers were more dependent on federal assistance than Wilder depicted in her novels. Wilder's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, emerges as an integral character in her mother's later life. Lane, a professional author in her own right, vigorously edited her mother's manuscripts, though Fraser debunks the myth that Lane ghostwrote the books. But their relationship was a fraught one, and Fraser paints an unflattering portrait of Lane's dishonesty and descent into right-wing paranoia. She concludes by examining Wilder's pop cultural legacy. Fraser's exploration of Wilder's life opens her subject to new scrutiny, which, for Wilder's many fans, may be both exhilarating and disconcerting. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* The sesquicentennial observance of the birth of the author of the celebrated Little House books (65 million copies sold in 45 languages) has been the catalyst for the publication of a spate of books, now including this magisterial biography, which surely must be called definitive. Richly documented (it contains 85 pages of notes), it is the compelling, beautifully written story of a life whose childhood and early years of marriage were beset by incredible economic privation and disaster: poverty, hunger, fire, blizzards, invasions of locusts, and more, enough to seemingly eclipse the biblical plagues of Egypt. Somehow, Laura Ingalls Wilder survived it all and grew up to record her experiences in the pages of her Little House books, which as Fraser documents are a genial mixture of truth and fiction. Confronting allegations that Wilder's books were actually written by her daughter, author Rose Wilder Lane, Fraser evidences those claims' untruth, carefully demonstrating that the books were, instead, a sometimes uneasy collaboration of the two women, Wilder laying the foundation, Lane doing the editing and occasional embellishing. One of the more interesting aspects of this wonderfully insightful book is its delineation of the fraught relationship between Wilder and her deeply disturbed, often suicidal daughter. But it is its marriage of biography and history the latter providing such a rich context for the life that is one of the great strengths of this indispensable book, an unforgettable American story.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2017 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Generations of readers believe they learned all about pioneer life on the prairie from Laura Ingalls Wilder's beloved "Little House" novels. However, Fraser's brilliant biography of their enigmatic author shows a truth much darker and more complex than her cozy autobiographical children's fiction. This penetrating and heavily researched examination of Wilder's life, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and property and financial records, shows the homesteaders' endless, soul-crushing struggle against starvation and financial ruin as they migrated across the harsh environment of the American West. Squarely placing the novels into their historical, cultural, and ecological context, Fraser, editor of the Library of America editions of the "Little House" books, demythologizes and deepens our understanding of Wilder's sunny tales of American opportunism and self--sufficiency. For instance, the heavy-handed role of the federal government in encouraging westward migration (then often abandoning settlers in times of need) as well as the heartbreaking treatment of Native Americans is only hinted at in Wilder's books. Maintaining a warm, enthusiastic tone for more than 21 hours and smoothly switching between detailed historical accounts and Wilder family stories, narrator Christina Moore offers an exceptional performance. VERDICT This will find a welcome audience in all libraries. ["An excellent work that will appeal to readers interested in the "Little House" books and the historical events they depict": LJ 11/15/17 starred review of the Metropolitan: Holt hc.]-Beth Farrell, Cleveland State Univ. Law Lib. © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.