Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane

 Why do we love the Little House books so much?  For Americans, they reinforce and particularize the heroic myths of westward expansion by hard-working, self-sufficient pioneers.  Those of us who grew up on the Great Plains feel a deeper connection: we think of the books as the story of our own ancestors.

Caroline Fraser pays homage to this longing for connection by starting her excellent Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, with her own tenuous connection to the Wilders: her ancestors lived in the same corner of Wisconsin as the Ingalls.

Fraser then launches into a well-researched, wonderfully written story of the Ingalls.  In it, she carefully points out the differences between actual events and the books – Wilder had a habit of glossing over the difficult parts.  For example, leaving Burr Oak, Iowa, which the Ingalls fled without paying their debts, completely out of the books.  The difficulties that remained in the books are the sort that pioneers could heroically overcome or endure: locusts, or a severe winter.

The Little House books end with Laura’s marriage to Almanzo Wilder, but happiness and prosperity eluded her. As noted in the posthumously published The First Four Years, Almanzo’s attempt to make a go of it as a homesteader failed.  Then he suffered a stroke that partially disabled him and left him unable to do heavy work for the rest of his life.  In 1894, when Laura was 27, they left South Dakota and moved to land near Mansfield, in southwest Missouri, where she lived out her life. 

Fraser did a huge amount of research, going beyond the published materials to the extensive trove of letters and diaries left behind by Laura and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, and on the newspaper columns Laura wrote for local papers, starting about 1910.  For example, Fraser uses letters and the various hand-written and typed manuscripts of the Little House books to show that Laura wrote them and Rose brilliantly edited them.

This book is also the story of Wilder’s daughter, and the fraught relationship between them.  The real revelation of these books is what an amoral piece of work Rose was. “The Lane who emerged during this period [1910’s, working for newspapers in San Francisco] had no conscience, was heedless of others’ feelings, and possessed little regard for professional courtesy….  She appeared to have no qualms or moral compass, no sense of what was fair or appropriate.”  It is fair to say she didn’t improve with age. In places, the book reads like a slow-motion train wreck; just when you think it can’t get worse, it does.  Indeed, it was Lane’s reputation for fabrication that would cause many to doubt the truthfulness of the Little House books.

It leaves the reader tempted to perform amateur psychoanalysis.  Just what sort of home environment could have produced Rose?  We know Laura had a temper and shouted a fair amount at Almanzo (and presumably Rose).  Do we hold it against Laura that she produced Rose?  Or do we just blame it on undiagnosed bipolar disorder?

Fraser also explores their libertarian politics.  Lane’s philosophical writings in the 1940s, along with those of Ayn Rand and Isabel Mary Paterson, “laid the foundation for the libertarian political movement in the United States.” There is no evidence that Laura disagreed with her.  Fraser speculates that their libertarianism might have been due to shame at having had to accept charity, or unwillingness to acknowledge they had benefited from the largest government giveaway in US history, the Homestead Act.

Somewhat to my surprise, Fraser takes a balanced view of Charles “Pa” Ingalls.  There is a school of thought that he failed at everything he ever tried, and his essentially anti-social nature made life unnecessarily difficult for his wife, Caroline, and their daughters.  It’s probably true, but Fraser points out that it was basically impossible for small freeholders to succeed at that time and place. Despite John Wesley Powell’s warning that the Great Plains were an ecological disaster waiting to happen, the government gave away land to encourage settlement, and homesteaders like the Ingalls and the Wilders paid the price.  Fraser also makes it clear that the Ingalls had a good marriage.  For example, Caroline had enough power to put her foot down when Charles wanted to move on to Oregon.

Thoroughly researched and well-written, Prairie Fires carries the reader along.  Highly recommended for lovers of the Little House books and, well, everybody else, too.

 

Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (2017)

Metropolitan, 640 pp.