Little House Series and Pioneer Girl Readalong

[PrairieSmoke]

If you don't want to be spoiled...don't read any further.

 

Burr Oak, IA

The Burr Oak years, no wonder they didn't make it into any of the Little House books. The place just sounded like a dump. Sounds like Laura didn't have too many good memories of it either.  

About the leaving in the middle of the night incident. I'm forgetting some of the details, but it sounds like the hotel owner was skimming some of Charles's wages to begin with. Then when the Ingalls decided to leave, the owner said, "Well, you owe this much and if you don't pay, I'll call the law." To make them leave in the middle of the night, it sounds like the owner would have kept saying, now you owe this much, now you owe that much. Making it so the debt was never possible to pay off. 

So, they just packed up and fled.

 

Walnut Grove, MN

The grasshopper attacks sound horrible no matter which way Laura tells it. In OTBOPC, the details are incredible. Laura was really an excellent author of fiction, so descriptive. Farmers all over the southeast (?) part of the state wrote to the govenor of Minnesota and said real starvation would take place if they didn't help the people. I can't blame the Ingalls for leaving at all. After two years of grasshoppers, the eggs were laid for a third year. I would have started packing the house that day. That was when Charles Ingalls went to some official office and declared himself "totally without means" and got a barrel of flour, I believe. 

 

De Smet, SD

In the BTSOSL section of South Dakota, Laura tries to explain Aunt Docia and Uncle Hi and how they "took" three wagon loads of supplies. I can't figure out what she means by the explanation. In the footnotes it kind of implies, "everybody cheats the railroads." I'm almost thinking in the days before labor and wage laws, well, sometimes you got an honest day's pay, sometimes you didn't. You just worked for someone coming through and hoped that you finished the day in one piece. Maybe wage skimming, supply skimming took place on both sides??? Just hypothesizing.

 

The Hard Winter, De Smet, SD

Laura calls it the Hard Winter. So, the young family that stayed with the Ingalls didn't want to help with anything? If I were Charles, I would have said, "Come outside here and think about what contribution you will make to this household. When you make a decision, you can come back in." Laura tells of Almonzo and Cap making the trip for the wheat "at great peril to their lives." Laura writes so matter of factly. Not emotional, not flowery, just the facts. I believe I read Charles did in fact get an antelope, and they shared it. 

 

Indian Territory, KS

At the end, soldiers come to remove the Ingalls from their homestead. Again, can't remember the details, but many settlers had to leave. In fact, a few families traveled with the Ingalls for a few days before turning into another direction. 

 

*******

All in all, Laura used Pioneer Girl as a basis for the fictional Ingalls family she created for the Little House book series. In the books, the Ingalls are part of the mythology of the American pioneers, "The Ingalls vs The Frontier." Rugged, independent, no one to depend on but themselves. 

In reality, they really are dependent on others to an extent. Everyone needed someone back then. If you plopped yourself down in the middle of the prairie, you found your nearest neighbors. The Smiths live to the southwest, the Andersens live to the east about an hours ride, ect...

 

Maybe Laura unintentionally made Charles look bad by him making boisterous promises, ("We'll live like kings Caroline!"), then the harsh realities of their new land sets in. I think in real life Charles did have an itchy foot, wanted to go to where there was the promise of the good life. I think he did the best he could under the cirsumstances they found themselves in. I mean, before we destroyed the native animals natural habitat, there were just lots of animals around. Plant some potatoes, corn, the animals see a new food supply, and they come eat it all. Then you start all over again, or go to Plan B. The crow pie, Laura says in PG, they were tasty, so I don't feel so bad for her eating crow pie.

 

Laura was a very tough, sturdy woman. She was the only one who could handle working and keeping things together when Charles couldn't find work. Mary was blind, Carrie was not in the best of health, Grace was young, so Laura was the strongest of the siblings. Back then, the family was an economic unit, and it took everyone able to work to make a living.

 

The Ingalls did succeed though. They say two-thirds of the settlers to the Dakotas and westward didn't last the five years. The Ingalls did.

 

Well, this is all I can think of. Whoever read this far, congratulations!

[proserpina65]

De Smet, SD

In the BTSOSL section of South Dakota, Laura tries to explain Aunt Docia and Uncle Hi and how they "took" three wagon loads of supplies. I can't figure out what she means by the explanation. In the footnotes it kind of implies, "everybody cheats the railroads." I'm almost thinking in the days before labor and wage laws, well, sometimes you got an honest day's pay, sometimes you didn't. You just worked for someone coming through and hoped that you finished the day in one piece. Maybe wage skimming, supply skimming took place on both sides??? Just hypothesizing.

It had something to do with how the contract between the railroad company and the independent contractor was written; the contracts pretty much always benefitted the railroad.  Apparently if the independent contractors used their own teams of horses and/or wagons instead of hiring outside ones, they didn't get paid for those teams/wagons.  Hence Uncle Hi putting his in Charles Ingalls' name instead.  In the footnotes, it basically said that Hi came out in debt to the railroad after his first two contracts with that particular company, and ended up charging the railroad for some supplies which he had sold on the side to try and make up for some of that debt.  It implied that independent contractors working for the railroad companies were pretty much screwed if they tried to remain 100% honest.

 

[ElderPrice]

I came away from Pioneer Girl with a new respect for Pa. Yes, he had an "itchy wandering foot" and moved the family around a lot. But he was also a hard worker who did whatever was needed to feed the family. He ate last and ate the least, LIW recounts him leaving the table after only nibbling, after slaving in the fields all day, so that the others would have more food. He got up in the mornings to start the fire and get the house warm before everyone else got up. I don't understand why he wanted to leave Wisconsin, where they had family, neighbors and a good life but he wasn't a lazy person running away from responsibilities. I know LIW wanted to portray her father as a heroic character in the Little House books, but I think in trying to inflate him he turned out almost like an overblown caricature of himself.  Charles Ingalls as recounted in Pioneer Girl had his faults but laziness and fear of work weren't among them.

Edited February 1, 2015 by ElderPrice

[henrysmom]

Another interesting story on the sales numbers for Pioneer Girl:

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/01/30/laura-ingalls-wilder-autobiography-pioneer-girl-tops-amazon-bestsellers/  

 

I had been wondering what numbers a decent selling non-fiction book would give and I think this article gives a clue.  PG's editor Pamela Hill wrote a biography of LIW back in 2007 that has since sold 13,500 copies.  The South Dakota Historical Society thought PG would sell more than that, so they decided on a first printing of 15,000 copies of PG.  As we all know, they underestimated just a bit.

 

 

[Sharpie66]

I remember hearing a generational historian back in the late '90s say that an okay run of hardcover sales was 5000 copies. Now, that was for a very wonky subject matter without a pop culture hook, but that has always been my baseline on nonfiction hardcover sales.

[DakotaJustice]

So those of you who already have the book (I'm still on back order :( ) could you tell me if one of my favorite secondary characters is mentioned?? 

 

that would be Kitty - the Ingalls' cat from Little Town on the Prairie (my favorite LH book). 

[proserpina65]

So those of you who already have the book (I'm still on back order :( ) could you tell me if one of my favorite secondary characters is mentioned?? 

 

that would be Kitty - the Ingalls' cat from Little Town on the Prairie (my favorite LH book). 

Yes, Kitty is mentioned more than once.  I always loved Kitty too.

[henrysmom]

And more on Kitty. This section in Pioneer Girl has a fascinating editorial note about conversation between Lane and Wilder. Lane thought the story should go in Silver Lake. Wilder wanted it in Little Town because "we were not civilized enough earlier". Lane also wanted Black Susan to be brought back and Wilder said no.

I hope somebody publishes the editorial letters between these two. I bet they're fascinating.

[Stargazer3]

The Google Doodle today honors the celebration of Laura Ingalls Wilder's 148th birthday. Nice tribute to her.

[PrairieSmoke]

Yes, if only Laura knew what she created. Pretty amazing. Happy Birthday Laura Ingalls Wilder, you don't look a day over 148 ;)

[Growsonwalls]

I just got this book. One of the things I was most surprised about was Mary Ingalls. Laura in the Little House books described Mary as the blond, blue-eyed beauty of the family, and Laura was the half-pint tomboy. Was surprised to see that Mary Ingalls had very dark hair and was rather plain. Laura was prettier (at least by modern standards). 

[DakotaJustice]

I just got this book. One of the things I was most surprised about was Mary Ingalls. Laura in the Little House books described Mary as the blond, blue-eyed beauty of the family, and Laura was the half-pint tomboy. Was surprised to see that Mary Ingalls had very dark hair and was rather plain. Laura was prettier (at least by modern standards). 

 

I'm guessing she was blonde as a girl, and then her hair darkened over time. Or maybe it's just the photos being black and white.

 

The earliest photo of the three girls taken in 1880 (?) after the Hard Winter - I think Mary is quite pretty in that.  Laura has the most expression.  Poor Carrie was the one who wasn't exactly a beauty.

[Sharpie66]

While doing my usual task here at work of following various blogs for news stories, I found this story in a Massachusetts healthcare blog:

 

10 Bits Of Blizzard Therapy From Laura Ingalls Wilder’s ‘The Long Winter’

[hendersonrocks]

10 Bits Of Blizzard Therapy From Laura Ingalls Wilder’s ‘The Long Winter’

 

Aw, I loved that; thanks for sharing. The Long Winter was always my favorite of the books (followed by Little Town on the Prairie & These Happy Golden Years), probably because I identified with it so much as a Minnesota prairie kid who loved/hated winter.

[Snow Apple]

I just stumbled on a copy of Young Pioneers by Rose Wilder Lane at a book exchange. It will have to tied me over while I'm still(!) waiting for a library copy of Pioneer Girl from the library to become available.

[DakotaJustice]

Still have yet to receive my copy from Amazon, but my library hold came through yesterday!!!  So far it's an amazing book, I can't wait to get my own copy.

[Snow Apple]

Finally got my library hold copy too. I'm up to the scene where Ma told the girls to ask Aunt Lottie if she likes gold or brown hair. Yikes! In the back of my mind, I was hoping that was made up for the novels. Oh, Ma.

 

Also found out Aunt Lottie was only 12 years old during that scene. 

[cathy7304]

Woo hoo! I finally got a delivery date from Amazon for PG. I had ordered it in December. My delivery date is now March 20th. I can't wait to get started.

I gave up on getting it from my local library. There are still 95 people ahead of me.

[Snow Apple]

I have a question for those who read this book (or any other book where this was mentioned). Ma baked a lemon pie for a town picnic and assured Laura and Mary they will get a piece. Is the story about the woman stealing the pie or was it just an innocent mistake of saving food not knowing part of it was "reserved" and Laura kept quiet because after all, children should be seen and not heard.

[proserpina65]

I have a question for those who read this book (or any other book where this was mentioned). Ma baked a lemon pie for a town picnic and assured Laura and Mary they will get a piece. Is the story about the woman stealing the pie or was it just an innocent mistake of saving food not knowing part of it was "reserved" and Laura kept quiet because after all, children should be seen and not heard.

To me, it read like the chaperon who set the pie aside for the adults had no idea that any of it had been promised to the children, but also didn't really care whether or not the children of the person who contributed it got any.  Given how messed up some of the rest of that picnic was, in Laura's recollection anyway, it just seemed part and parcel with the rather cavalier treatment of the children.

[Snow Apple]

Thanks. I wasn't sure if there was something shifty going on or if it was just the attitude of the times.

[henrysmom]

Thinking about the pie held back at the picnic in Pioneer Girl makes me wonder about all the food held back at that New England Supper in Little Town on the Prairie.  I wonder if anybody left the supper muttering, "What the heck happened to that pie I brought? Put in all that work making it and I don't even get a piece of my own pie!"

[cathy7304]

Happy day! I just received my copy of PG today. It's a beautiful book. I agree with others that this is going to take awhile to get through. But, I view that as a very good thing. So far I'm just at the "Acknowledgements" section because I keep skipping ahead to check out all the wonderful pictures.

[PrairieSmoke]

You know, since the Little House books are made up, I wonder how much of Farmer Boy is fiction. I wonder if Laura used all that food metaphorically, to show the differences in her and Almonzo's upbringing. I can imagine Laura and Almanzo reading the Farmer Boy manuscript and giggling their heads off! 

[Athena]

I read half of PG today. At first, I found it difficult to read the actual manuscript and the footnotes, but once I got into the rhythm, I really enjoyed it. The footnotes are excellent. They bring so much historical facts and information to light about the people. There are some really interesting and gritty stories as well. I admire real Laura even more now.

[hendersonrocks]

I read half of PG today. At first, I found it difficult to read the actual manuscript and the footnotes, but once I got into the rhythm, I really enjoyed it.

 

My copy just came in from the library this weekend (I was request number 400-something to start!), and I've read the introduction and just the first section of Pioneer Girl itself. I'm still trying to figure out how to approach reading it--I think I'm going to read the original PG narrative all the way through each section, then go back and re-read the annotations for that section. What worked for you?

 

And my main reflection upon reading the introduction--which I thought was full of interesting information--was that Rose Wilder Lane seemed like a...handful. To use a nicer word than what first came to mind.

[Athena]

I think I'm going to read the original PG narrative all the way through each section, then go back and re-read the annotations for that section. What worked for you?

 

And my main reflection upon reading the introduction--which I thought was full of interesting information--was that Rose Wilder Lane seemed like a...handful. To use a nicer word than what first came to mind.

 

If I had more time (this is was a library copy), I would have done that. In the end, I managed to just read one page (or two depending on the story it was telling) and then reading the notes. Somehow, I got use to the groove of it. I would reread certain passages again afterwards too.

 

By many accounts, Lane was not a laid back person. I've avoided reading most things by and about her because of it. I do think she offered Wilder some good advice and as an editor, she was not too bad. The editor of PG Pamela Smith Hill actually wrote an earlier biography of Wilder which was even more critical of Lane. I came away from PG more sympathetic to Lane but just very happy to read Laura's original words.

[henrysmom]

I'm still trying to figure out how to approach reading it--I think I'm going to read the original PG narrative all the way through each section, then go back and re-read the annotations for that section. What worked for you?

 

 

I found the book impossible to read all at once so I finally read the text of Pioneer Girl all the way through, then went back and read the annotations (rereading the text of Pioneer Girl if I needed to).

[Snow Apple]

I started reading the text and stopping to read the footnote, but that got really old. So I just read the text and read the footnote if I was really interested. Then went back to read the footnotes after each section. The footnotes is like having a second book; I think you can read it separately and understand what they are talking about without getting lost, especially since there's a word or sentence reminding you what's going on.

 

Now there are events that I have to get off my chest, so skip if you don't want any "SPOILERS"

 

That Rev. Brown was sure unpleasant. I was disgusted to read the part where he went over for dinner and took most of the baked beans and ALL the meat flavoring the dish. "There's not much so I may as well take it all" indeed. 

[Athena]

Lots of moments did irk me:

 

• The school picnic where Ma makes Laura's favourite - Lemon pie - and the teachers take it all "There wasn't much of this any way so I saved it for us."
• Rev. Brown and all his annoyingness
• The couple, especially the man who lived with them during the first winter and ate most of food and did no chores/work: "Potatoes sure fill you up when it's cold"
• A lot of the Burr Oak, Iowa section: Steadmans cheating the family, Laura being woken up by a drunk creep, Pa leaving in the dark.

 

Most of these moments bothered me because like many girls, I related and/or admired Laura growing up. As a result, I am protective of her and to an extent, the Ingalls family. It was galling to read some of the stuff they went through.

 

I loved the book a lot. It made me fall in love with the series again and I came away from it liking the real life people (Wilder, Lane, and Pa) even more than ever. I think it's essential reading for anyone who really loves the fictional series.

[SherriAnt]

I am currently on hold to read Pioneer Girl, so in the meantime, I got a book called "The Good Old Days- They Were Terrible!" by Otto Bettmann. Amazing information! It makes you look at all the Little House books quite differently. I'm glad this page exists, by the way! I'm more of a reader than a tv watcher, so this is cool.

[hendersonrocks]

I finished it! (With two days to spare before the library due date.)

 

I'd definitely recommend it to any Little House fan looking for new insights--I think the one thing I found most interesting was the intentional way the narrative shifted between Pioneer Girl and the fictional books to beef up the independence and resilience of the Ingalls family. They certainly were in real life, too, but it's clear they had more help along the way and that financial security was a constant challenge.

 

As an Almanzo fan (I have a "I ♥ Almanzo" button, and I'm not even ashamed about it) I really liked the end and seeing how their relationship unfolded. It seemed quite similar to the other books--I probably would have been really bummed if that was wildly out of sync!

[Stargazer3]

Last year my son bought me a Kindle Fire. Included in an update is a free subscription to the Washington Post. In today's edition they have an article about Pioneer Girl. Unfortunately I am on the Kindle and can't copy and paste the link here but the article is The Hottest House on the Prairie. It's an interesting article and it is amazing to read about how difficult it's been to keep up with the demand for the book. One error - the writer of the article puts Jack's death in Plum Creek, rather than in Silver Lake.

[Stargazer3]

My daughter saw SherriAnt's post about the book "The Good Old Days - They Were Terrible", got interested and asked if I would buy her a copy. I did and she read it with her hair standing on end. One of the things mentioned was that a typical horse could produce an enormous amount of...manure a day. Something like over 20 pounds. She thought about that a bit, then came to me wide-eyed and asked "What did Almonzo's father do with it in the winter?" She knew that in the summer the animals stayed mostly in the pasture, outside, but in the winter would be in the barn. And she brought up the fact that Mr. Wilder had SO many animals.

I told her that I had no idea. They used some for fertilizing the ground, but most likely couldn't use it all. And I said that Laura didn't mention problems like that, nor the use of outhouses so we can't be sure what they did but it does make one wonder. Laura's family never had a lot of livestock so it probably was not a major issue for Pa, but you have to wonder about Almonzo's family.

[PrincessLuceval]

 

One error - the writer of the article puts Jack's death in Plum Creek, rather than in Silver Lake.

Jack did die at Plum Creek - before the family moved to Silver Lake. Laura had been neglecting him during the illnesses, and gave him fresh water and fixed up his blanket. The next day, before Pa left for his new job with the railroad, Jack was found dead.

[henrysmom]

I think this is the article Stargazer3 mentions in the Washington Post.  Even if it isn't it is certainly interesting:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/laura-ingalls-wilder-finds-new-stardom-in-an-old-fashioned-way/2015/04/22/78776db2-e75e-11e4-9767-6276fc9b0ada_story.html

 

And this may or may not answer the manure questions Stargazer had:

 

http://practicalhorsemanmag.com/article/solve-the-horse-manure-pile-problem

Edited April 23, 2015 by henrysmom

[Stargazer3]

At the time I read the article the author stated Jack died in the Plum Creek book. It was later changed to By the Shores of Silver Lake in a later addition to the paper.

[SherriAnt]

Stargazer3, I'm glad your daughter enjoyed the book! It sure does make you look at the past differently. I know I would never be able to keep up with Ma in the housekeeping business, and I have electricity and indoor plumbing!

[cathy7304]

I just finished my copy of Pioneer Girl. I genuinely loved this book. I just wish the book didn't end. While I have read The First Four Years and On the Way Home, Pioneer Girl opened my eyes to the idea that what I took for facts shows there are other stories to be told.

Any recommendations on what I should read next?

[henrysmom]

Any recommendations on what I should read next?

 

 

If you haven't read the Little House Sampler, I recommend it.  It is a collection of writings by both Laura and Rose and gives a nice continuation of their stories.

 

As far as biographies, easily the best I've read is Pamela Smith Hill's Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer's Life.  She doesn't make Laura out to be a saint, but doesn't vilify her either.  Her portrait of Laura is one of a woman with both strengths and flaws.  I think she also does a fairly good job of portraying Rose, though I'm sure others would disagree with me on that.

 

I've read two other biographies of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  One is by Donald Zochert and the other by John E. Miller.  Zochert's was written quite a few years ago and I thought was on the superficial and sentimental side.  The Miller book, Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder, I thought was dry and uninteresting.  

 

There are a bunch of little brochure type books on the Ingalls and Wilder families too, most of them written by William T. Anderson.  I've read quite a few of them and they are interesting.  Because they are so short they pretty much stick to the facts and don't provide anything in the way of commentary or analysis, but if you just want the general info on, say, the Wilder family, they do a good job.  

[Sharpie66]

I read the Zochert bio when I was in fifth grade when it was published (late '76/early '77), and so were a lot of my female classmates. The book was definitely appropriate for the junior-high level reader, I'd say. It was pretty good (the final image he has of her dying is very moving), but yes, it was pretty superficial.

[cathy7304]

Thank you so much for the recommendations. I like to read books based on recommendations rather than just by running across one. I have a gift card at Amazon and now I know what I'm going to do with it.

I hope this forum keeps going as others receive their copies of Pioneer Girl. Others' points of view is so interesting. This read-a-long has been so enjoyable. Please keep it up.

[Stargazer3]

One of my favorite moments in Pioneer Girl is when Mr George George goes to the beer garden and comes back with some beer. Laura and Mary try it but are disappointed at the bitter taste. I remember when I was really young asking my grandfather for a sip of his beer. It looked so good but was so nasty. When he saw my face my grandfather laughed until he cried. Considering how anti-drink Ma was I was surprised she let them have any, and I wondered if Pa helped himself.

(Or even Ma!! Horrors!!!)

I wondered too about the china shepherdess. In Pioneer Girl it's mentioned that Laura never says anything about it at all. Not once. And it was very important in the books in establishing places where the Ingalls family were settled. Ma would only put it out when the family was in a more permanent home. Laura did say that Carrie ended up with it but I felt that the people who worked on Pioneer Girl were a bit puzzled by its omission in the Pioneer Girl manuscript, and they also wondered why Laura never mentioned it.

[henrysmom]

Some commentary on the china shepherdess here:

 

//discoverlaura.wordpress.com/2014/07/09/the-mystery-of-mas-china-shepherdess/

 

I have the replica china shepherdess pictured.  It is kind of ugly so I am hoping I didn't really spend forty bucks on it in a touristy haze in Mansfield Missouri.

[cathy7304]

I'm currently reading Pamela Smith Hill's book on LIW. I'm in the chapter where it seems to be apparent that Laura's daughter, Rose, totally lifted ideas and content from Laura's Pioneer Girl to write her own novel Let the Hurricane Roar. This seems to be done without Laura's knowledge or consent. You can almost feel Laura's sadness and disappointment in her daughter. She felt that she could now never write her novel for adults because it would seem like she would be the one who "stole" ideas.

I've always been a little on the fence with regards to Rose, but I'm now firmly on Laura's side. I know that we will probably never know the true relationship between Mother and Daughter, but there just doesn't seem to be any other way to interpret Rose's actions. It screams of jealousy of her Mother's new successes. She knew of her Mother's desire to publish PG for an adult audience.

Does anyone else get this feeling or have I totally done an disservice to Rose?

[henrysmom]

Trust me Cathy.  You are definitely not alone!

 

I am taking a MOOC (massive online open access course) on Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House books.  The instructor is Pamela Hill Smith, and her lectures really do point up the fact that Rose Wilder Lane not only didn't ask her mother for permission to use the material in Pioneer Girl, but <knew> it was wrong.  From her diary entries, it is pretty clear that Lane knew her mother would not like her using the material, and she did her best to keep her book a secret from her mother.  The lectures from this class are on You Tube.  I'm not sure if that means they are copyright protected or not so if a moderator wants me to take this link out, please let me know:

This is the first lecture for that section of the course.  There are three for this section and the second and third should be easy enough to find.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i36P1p4YPJ8&feature=youtu.be

 

After I watched these three lectures I was so mad at Rose I couldn't trust myself to post to the class discussion.  I've since calmed down a bit and bought a book (fictional) called A Wilder Rose by Susan Wittig Albert that is supposed to be more on Rose's side.  Once I've read that I'll see what I think.

 

It looks like quite a bit of Pamela Hill Smith's material came either from Rose's diaries (please let those be published some day!) and an article called Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane: the Continuing Collaboration by William T. Anderson.  It was published in the journal South Dakota History in 1986.  I don't want to post a link here because it may violate copyright but if you google the title and author it will come up in PDF format.  Warning: it is over 50 pages long!  It does have a lot of interesting information on the mother/daughter dynamic though, and even goes into Almanzo's relationship with his wife and daughter, something that is usually ignored.

 

 

[Athena]

These are other articles about the relationship between Lane and Wilder:

 

The New Yorker, 2009: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/10/wilder-women

NPR, 2009: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111992555

Slate, 2014: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2014/04/21/rose_wilder_lane_laura_ingalls_wilder_a_letter_from_their_editorial_collaboration.html

 

I read a lot these articles after reading Pioneer Girl which PHS edited and worked on. I actually had a less than favourable opinion of Lane going in, but reading the book, I actually came away feeling more sorry for the woman. I think some of the above articles address it. Lane was very bad with money and had some deep insecurities and issues. I think she felt neglected growing up in that household. She seemed extremely depressed at times. I think I can see how burdened she felt. Of course, I don't excuse her lying and plagiarizing her own mother. 

 

Still, I have no desire to read any of her work outside of Little House. I never got around to reading the novels about Rose either. I don't agree with a lot of Lane's political views nor her strange idea about blurring the lines between fiction and nonfiction.

[juneday]

Trust me Cathy. You are definitely not alone!

I am taking a MOOC (massive online open access course) on Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House books. The instructor is Pamela Hill Smith, and her lectures really do point up the fact that Rose Wilder Lane not only didn't ask her mother for permission to use the material in Pioneer Girl, but <knew> it was wrong. From her diary entries, it is pretty clear that Lane knew her mother would not like her using the material, and she did her best to keep her book a secret from her mother.

Wow, that's a pretty low thing for Rose to have done. I have never read Let the Hurricane Roar, but I have read reviews of it and the general consensus seems to be that it is written in a very similar style and with some of the same material that was in Laura's Little House books.

I always got the feeling that Laura and Rose's relationship was strained from reading some letters in the book West from Home and the like, but I never knew Rose would really rip stories and material from her own mother. How sad.

ETA: I've read reviews and summaries of a book, supposedly more of a biography of Rose called The Ghost in Little House, and always had no desire to read it whatsoever. Honestly, even the summary about it made me a little angry. It's a book that seems to vilify Laura and vindicate Rose. However, it would be interesting to read all the biographies/books of this nature written about both of them and see what my final opinion is.

Edited May 26, 2015 by juneday

[henrysmom]

I do want to be fair to both Rose and Laura, which is why I'm trying to read a great deal about both.  But generally Rose somehow manages, through her own words in letters and diary entries, to just piss me off time and time again.  I think I've mentioned in this forum before about a letter she wrote to Almanzo, when Laura was visiting Rose in San Francisco, about how fat Laura had gotten. The entire letter was printed so you couldn't say something was taken out of context.  And it just made Rose sound like a spoiled, nasty brat--more Nellie Oelson than Laura Ingalls.

 

And the story around the whole Young Pioneer debacle is fascinating.  Rose heard from the publisher of the Saturday Evening Post, which was a huge and prestigious magazine back in the 1930s, that "her"--meaning Rose's--stories about pioneer life might be of interest to the Post.  Trouble was, they weren't her stories.  Rose had had her agent shopping around her mother's manuscript, the one that was published in 2014 as Pioneer Girl.  It was those stories the Post was interested in, but the publisher apparently thought the stories were written by Rose.  This was just as the first Little House book was published so it was Rose who was the famous one in the family, not Laura.

 

Now, Rose was broke and in debt at the time.  She'd invested in the stock market and the market crash pretty much wiped out her savings.  And the resulting Depression meant there were fewer magazines buying fewer stories.  On top of that, Rose had spent a great deal of money building her parents a house in Missouri where they could live in comfort.  She went way over budget on it, and the debt was huge for the time.  So I can see what a spot she was in.  She was basically back at home living in a place she thought a backwater, after travelling the world.  And she didn't see a way out other than to earn a bunch of money fast.

 

Now, if it had been me (hopefully) I would have gone to my mother and said, "Mom, I have a chance to make some money by writing a story about our family.  Can I use some of the stories you've told me about Grandma and Grandpa?"  Hey, they are family stories--nothing wrong with more than one family member writing about their family history.

 

Maybe Laura would have said no.  Maybe it never occurred to Rose to ask.  But she basically just took the stories Laura had written in Pioneer Girl and wrote Let the Hurricane Roar, a book about a pioneer couple named Charles and Caroline who go out west and fight grasshoppers and whatnot.  A little fictionalized but pretty much every story was lifted directly from family history, as told in Pioneer Girl.

And then Rose thought she could somehow keep this a secret!  As the book was published and started to get a little press, Rose had a visitor who proudly showed off a review of her friend's new book to Laura, who was Not Amused.  I can only imagine the conversation that went down between mother and daughter after that, but from what Rose's diary entries seem to say, it wasn't pretty.

 

That is one reason I wish Rose's diaries would be printed.  You only get glimpses of them in the biographies.  I'd like to see the whole thing.

 

I have yet to read Ghost in the Little House, but from some reviews I've read even that isn't too terribly sympathetic to Rose.  Supposedly one story in it says that one time Laura (elderly at the time) fell down in a public setting and Rose refused to help her get up, and actually took pleasure in the fact that her mother was helpless.  No idea if this story is true--it was in one of the reviews I read of the book.  Didn't make me too sympathetic to Rose, that is for sure.  Everything I've read about Rose makes her sound like a spoiled, petulant brat.  I get that she grew up poor and it scarred her.  I realize she had some mental health issues.  But behind all that comes a picture of a woman who just wasn't all that nice.  

 

Maybe A Wilder Rose will change that picture for me.  I'll post here when I've read it.

[Mybrainhurts]

I actually did read "A Ghost in the Little House" years ago, but it really didn't make me any more sympathetic to Rose.  The author tries to make Laura very unlikable but it really doesn't work in that the "horrible" things that Laura did to Rose really weren't all that horrible.  The family lived in poverty in Missouri and Rose was very sensitive about that.  Laura was also more of a "tough it out" sort of parent instead of what I call the "cookie mommy" type so I'm guessing that Rose thought that Laura was a mean person.  What I took away from the book was that Rose seemed to suffer from horrible bouts of depression and anger and that a lot of those emotions were directed toward her mother.  It didn't mean that Laura was a bad parent, she just wasn't the parent that Rose wanted and that Rose didn't have the insight to figure that out.  

 

I would love to see Rose's diaries too, but I have the feeling that they will never see the light of day since they are in the hands of Roger Macbride's adopted daughter and she probably wouldn't want to tarnish the Ingalls family brand at this point.  There's still too much money to be made right now.