Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder

One of my most vivid youthful memories is of my Dad stretched out on the couch in our living room, surrounded by his daughters. He was reading aloud to us from "The Long Winter" by Laura Ingalls Wilder. If I examine that scene more closely, I remember we moved to that house when I was in about 7th grade. That means I was beyond the age of most devoted readers of Wilder's "Little House" books.

For me, Laura's books are a pleasant jumble of images of a stalwart, honorable, loving pioneer family and their tribulations. I mention this fact because it meant I could read Caroline Fraser's exhaustive book — "Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder" — without the true back story of the Ingalls and Wilder families breaking my heart. 

At 515 pages (with another 100 pages of source notes etc.), it is not exaggerating to call Fraser's book "exhaustive." The print is a bit larger than typical for this kind of serious book with generous spacing between the lines making it easy on the eyes — important considerations with a volume this big.

Don't let the size deter you. Fraser has written a tale as vast and enthralling as the frontier. She never shies away from the hard questions like those that have swirled around the famed series of books in recent years: Are the stories fact or fiction, did Laura — or her daughter Rose — write them and were mother and daughter anti-goverment Libertarians? Fraser has dug deep, searching through letters and land sale/mortgage documents, unpublished manuscripts and memoirs, newspaper files and more.

From the beginning of her book, Fraser points out that if Laura's story is to be told in its historical context, that story will be different than the charming books she wrote. Her story, Fraser shows, was "broader, stranger and darker than her books." Even Laura herself admitted, "All I have told is true but it is not the whole truth."

That truth was devastating for so many Americans — like Laura's father — who answered the siren call of the prairies and went west in the 19th century. In the front of Fraser's book is a map showing all the locations where the Ingalls and Wilder families lived. Charles Ingalls endlessly searched for more land, better land, a place with fewer neighbors and more opportunities. One of the biggest shocks of Fraser's book is the discovery that Pa — illegally and knowingly — settled on Osage Indian land that was not available for settlement. Then there are instances of Pa uprooting the family and just walking away leaving debts unpaid. 

These vastly differing landscapes later became the sites of all the "little houses." In reality, those many moves never supplied what Charles Ingalls, and later Laura herself, were searching for. The prairie was the great love and the great tragedy of their lives; offering crippling debt that the delights of waving tall grass and birdsong could not dispel. The truth is that few farmers who went west were able to make a living without an additional source of income.

At age 9 Laura has to go to work and her financial help is critical to her family's survival. Her jobs are not what we would consider appropriate to her age, including washing dishes and waiting tables in a hotel. I kept picturing her as one of those tragic children in Lewis Hine's photographs.

Carrie (left), Mary and Laura in 1879 or 1880.

One of the strengths of Fraser's "Prairie Fires" is that it places each of the Little House books in the context of its era with all the economics, politics and natural and man-made disasters that affected the family in full view and fully explained. Fraser's book rangers from Frederick Jackson Turner to Ayn Rand and the Koch brothers, from the Peshtigo Fire to the Great Depression, with bank failures and corporate deception on full display.

The description of the locusts that hit the prairies in the early 1870s is almost beyond belief — though the fact that the government response helped little is not. In fact, again and again Fraser brings drought, land clearing, monoculture and monolithic farms right into the present. It becomes quite clear that stripping the prairies of native grasses in order to farm it had profoundly negative effects on farmers, brought on by themselves and from farming in areas not meant for crops.  

At age 16, Laura marries Almanzo Wilder, the hero of "The Long Winter," and leaves her family and her beloved Pa. You can't read the Little House books without falling in love with Pa and Almanzo. But it turns out that though they may have been willing to work hard, both men had little business sense and were always on the edge of ruin. Thus married life does not bring the economic security lacking in Laura's childhood.

In the books, despite all the hardships and poverty, Laura celebrated family closeness and the fun they made for themselves, especially Pa's fiddle playing. The relationship with her father that she so cherished does not seem to ever have existed between Almanzo and his daughter Rose. More often than not, Laura and Almanzo, as a couple, seem to have had little room for their daughter. Then again, after Laura travels back to the Dakota Territory for Charles Ingalls's funeral in 1902, she never saw her mother or sister Mary in person again, though both lived another 20+ years.

LAURA INGALLS WILDER (LEFT) AND HER DAUGHTER, ROSE WILDER LANE

Laura's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, is unlike her mother in many ways. She has a failed marriage, travels the world, has little regard for truth and is a spendthrift. She and her mother, however, both turn out to be talented writers with Rose often competing with her mother for the same material. It seems clear from Fraser that the "Little House" stories are Laura's and she is the main writer; but her daughter instigated her mother's writing career and gave her advice, editing and did some writing. As Fraser says, in every book, it is "the combination of their skills that created the transcendent whole."

Despite that, the two women had what can only be called a tumultuous relationship. Looking back from the 21st century, it seems clear that Rose had some type of mental illness and was probably bi-polar. She was a talented writer and was quite successful in her day. But both women saw "truth," in writing at least, as something "which reflected not objective reality but something closer to felt experience." Rose's relationship with her mother and her delusional behavior become difficult to read at times; partly because the rapprochements between the two never seem to last and we are constantly back to square one. 

ROSE WILDER LANE IN HETCH HETCHY VALLEY IN YOSEMITE, 1916-18. LANE WAS WRITING A STORY ABOUT THE VALLEY WHICH WAS SLATED TO BE TURNED INTO A RESERVOIR. (HERBERT HOOVER PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM)

If I was surprised at how much the past — at least environmentally — seemed to be endlessly repeating itself from Laura's childhood right up to the present, I was stunned at the political repetition. According to Fraser, "religion suffused" the politics of Laura's great-grandfather, Samuel Ingalls. The Puritans believed every affliction (like locusts) was a sign of God's judgment, but that dealing with such tragedies was the responsibility of the individual.

Fraser notes that over time and westward movement, the Ingalls family became less strict religiously; but one thing never changed: "the belief in self-reliance as an absolute sacrament." When the family failed it was easier for both Laura and Rose to blame the government than to admit their own part in their failure. Rose obviously took this concept to extremes as she grew older but this is clearly where their political stances originated. They did not take handouts and did not believe in giving them for the most part. 

Fraser covers the television series based on the Little House books, looks at the different illustrators, the trajectory of getting the stories published as well as the twisted thread of how Laura's will and the rights to her books was subverted. There were times I found the American history as fascinating, if not more so, than Laura's story. Because Fraser looked so deeply into what happened in Westward expansion, what caused it, whether it worked and how it played out right up to the present, the book functions equally well as a look at how all of us got to where we are today. 

Comments

[Peter/Outlaw]

A fascinating glimpse into the reality of these books we loved as children.

[Linda Brazill]

Her real story and experiences were much more Dickensian than the books would lead one to believe. I could never watch the TV series because Michael Landon looked nothing like the Garth Williams' illustrations.

[Lisa at Greenbow]

I read this. It was interesting. I didn't ever read all of those books. I only saw some of the tv versions. I was intrigued by the pioneer spirit. Whether it was right or wrong strong spirited people made it happen.

[Linda Brazill]

You are right. Took strong spirits as well as strong backs to make it happen. Hard to even imagine the privations from inside our warm houses.

[Loree / danger garden]

I loved the series as a child, never read the books. It's doubtful I would ever read this book so I really enjoyed your coverage of it.

[Linda Brazill]

Among my close friends are a lot of school teachers, librarians and writers. They are all up on YA lit so it is often a topic of conversation when we get together for our weekly coffee. Another woman in the group read it and we bored everyone with our continual discussion of it.

[Elizabeth]

“Life is not a song, sweetling.
Someday you may learn that, to your sorrow.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

I plan to read this book. I am sad that her life was not what it seemed in the "Little House" books, but the warmth that I experienced while sharing these stories with my mother is the lasting legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

[Linda Brazill]

I think you are right that it is the reading and sharing of the books that is the legacy.

[Michelle]

Thanks for letting us know about this book. I've read all of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books many times over as a child and an adult. I have not read any of the biographical accounts of the lives of any of the family. It is only very recently that I learned that Rose was a libertarian and either she or Laura had worked those themes into the Little House books, as well as left out some things that would not have been in line with that ideology. For instance, Mary's school for the blind was paid for by the state of SD while the book tells us Laura worked to put Mary through school. This would be the perfect time for me to read this book as it has been on my mind and I'd love to put the stories in the larger context of history.

On the lighter side, have you ever read Laura Ingalls Wilder's Fairy Poems? It's a sweet little book for gardeners that I stumbled across in a children's book section years ago. It is a compilation of some poems she had published in the San Fransisco Bulletin before writing her books.

[Linda Brazill]

I've never heard of that little book of Wilder's so I will have to see if I can find it locally. Thanks.