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Summary
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 Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser--the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House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 (5)
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.
Kirkus Review
A sensitive biography of the author of Little House on the Prairie.Many books about Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957) have stirred up controversy about her writing career and political views. William Holtz's The Ghost in the Little House (1993) ascribes considerable authorship to Wilder's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane; Christine Woodside's Libertarians on the Prairie (2016) presents compelling evidence for Wilder's ultraconservatism. Fraser (Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution, 2009, etc.), editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House books, offers a cleareyed and well-documented examination of Wilder's life, writings, and career; her relationship with Rose; and her politics. Deeply respectful of Wilder as a writer, she deems Little House on the Prairie "a classic work" and "a cultural monument" that, although fiction, tells "the truth about settlement, about homesteading," and about farmers' "astonishing feats of survival," which Wilder experienced firsthand. As a child, she was "constantly uprooted and often imperiled"; married at 18, she faced years of "exhaustion, failure, and regret." After her husband was crippled in an accident, compromising his ability to farm, Wilder, in addition to farm work, took odd jobs. When Rose, a journalist, suggested publishing as a way to make money, Wilder eagerly recorded memories of prairie life. Rose served as editor. Fraser portrays the domineering Rose as erratic, angry, depressive, and self-destructive, repeatedly causing "ruination to herself, bringing her life down around her ears." She compulsively poured money into house renovations and lavish travel, often leaving herself destitute. Like her mother, she was adamantly opposed to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal; she was anti-Semitic, "an apologist for dictatorial regimes," and a champion of Ayn Rand's work. The literary collaboration between mother and daughter was "a competition" between "Wilder's plain, unadorned, fact-based approach versus Lane's polished, dramatic, and fictionalized one. In Wilder's autobiographical work, truth' would become a battlefield." What emerged was a nostalgic life story, "reimagined as an American tale of progress," that catapulted Wilder to fame. A vivid portrait of frontier life and one of its most ardent celebrants. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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
New York Review of Books Review
PRAIRIE FIRES: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser. (Metropolitan/Holt, $35.) This thoroughly researched biography of the "Little House" author perceptively captures Wilder's extraordinary life and legacy, offering fresh interpretations of Western American history along the way. EMPRESS OF THE EAST: How a European Slave Girl Became Queen of the Ottoman Empire, by Leslie Peirce. (Basic, $32.) Peirce tells the remarkable story of Roxelana, a 16th-century Christian woman in Suleiman the Magnificent's harem who achieved unprecedented power and changed the nature of the Ottoman government. MRS. OSMOND, by John Banville. (Knopf, $27.95.) Banville's sequel to Henry James's novel "Portrait of a Lady," faithful to the master's style and story, follows Isabel Archer back to Rome and the possible end of her marriage. THE REPORTER'S KITCHEN: Essays, by Jane Kramer. (St. Martin's, $26.99.) In a delectable collection of culinary profiles, book reviews and reminiscences, the longtime New Yorker correspondent shows how she approaches life through food and food through life. FUTURE HOME OF THE LIVING GOD, by Louise Erdrich. (HarperCollins, $28.99.) What if human beings are neither inevitable nor ultimate? That's the premise of Erdrich's fascinating new novel, which describes a world where evolution is running backward and the future of civilization is in doubt. THE DAWN WATCH: Joseph Conrad in a Global World, by Maya Jasanoff. (Penguin Press, $30.) Conrad explored the frontiers of a globalized world at the turn of the last century. Jasanoff uses Conrad's novels and his biography in order to tell the history of that moment, one that mirrors our own. THE DAWN OF DETROIT: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits, by Tiya Miles. (The New Press, $27.95.) This rich and surprising book begins in the early 18th century, when the French controlled Detroit and most slaves were both Native American and female. THIS IS THE PLACE: Women Writing About Home, edited by Margot Kahn and Kelly McMasters. (Seal Press, paper, $16.99.) For these writers, home is where we are most ourselves - our mother tongue, our homeland, our people or just one person. JAMES WRIGHT: A Life in Poetry, by Jonathan Blunk. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $40.) Blunk illuminates the influences and obsessions of the ecstatic, troubled Wright and reveals him to be a lot like his poems: brilliant, intense and equally likely to soar or faceplant. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
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.