Prairie fires: The American dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser

This rich and fascinating biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, explores not just the intertwined lives of these two women, but the history of the times and places that shaped them.  Beginning with Laura’s parents, Charles and Caroline Ingalls, the book spans the period from the Civil War to present day.  Having read the Little House books as a child, and thankfully having missed most the subsequent TV series (being a jaded teenager at the time – even though Michael Landon, in his first year or so of portraying “Pa Ingalls” did serve as the Grand Marshal of our local “pet parade”), I was interested in learning more about the author of these beloved and influential books.  Not surprisingly, life was more complicated than portrayed in the stories, and so was the history of their writing.  Both women, and Laura’s husband, Almanzo, lived to ripe old ages. They were literal survivors of difficult lives.  Rose, the Wilder’s only child (a son was delivered stillborn before her birth) led a colorful and troubled life, full of world travel, journalism, sketchy relationships with a series of “adopted” young sons, and grandiose building schemes.  She was a staunch libertarian cut from the same cloth as her contemporary, Ayn Rand, and a well-known author in her own right long before her mother began writing her children’s books when she was in her sixties.  Just how much of the Little House books is the unadulterated version straight from Laura’s pen, and how much was “edited” by Rose has long been controversial.  Fraser explains the convoluted way that the books were developed giving full credit to Laura’s genius as a storyteller and memoirist, but also to Rose, who helped shaped them for publication.  We recently drove through Mansfield MO, where Laura, Almanzo and occasionally Rose, lived for the latter parts of their lives in the home called “Rocky Ridge.” The town of Mansfield, like so many small rural towns in the state, is just a wide spot in the road, but we had a nice lunch across from the town square.  The copyrights of from the Little House books, which were left in Laura’s will to the branch library there (named for her), eventually passed to the last of Rose’s “adopted sons,” Charles MacBride.  In the end, after litigation in the 1990s, the small Laura Ingalls Wilder branch of the Wright County Library System only received a $875,000 settlement – I well remember the case and the then-librarian, Carrie Cline’s, hope that the library would prevail.  625 pp. (includes copious notes)