Recently Read: Credo: the Rose Wilder Lane Story, by Peter Bagge

 

Rose Wilder Lane was a free soul, a proto-feminist, a proto-libertarian, partial author of the Little House books and much more. Her amazing life (starting on a dirt poor De Smet farmstead, as described in Laura Ingalls Wilder's posthumously published The First Four Years) has been documented many times and ways (including Lane's autobiographical works) and is intrinsically fascinating. Here it gets the Peter Bagge treatment and, being a fan of both the Little House books and Bagge's work, I had high hopes for this book.

I was first surprised by Credo's diminutive size. When I first began reading Bagge's work, in 1985, it was being published magazine size. Later his work was published comic book size. Here it's published less than 7" x 9". What's next - postage stamp size? Bagge's lettering and art seemingly haven't been altered to accommodate the smaller size, either, making the work small, cramped and just plain hard to read. The font size used for the introduction practically requires a magnifying glass. Really, Drawn and Quarterly? Couldn't you give a great cartoonist a chance to shine?

Bagge's cartooning is as fun and expressive as ever, capturing the ever-shifting emotions and agendas of a person famous for their mood swings and short attention span. The drawing is excellent. The pacing, though... I would have loved to see the story slow down enough for longer dramatic scenes. As it is, the (only 72-page) work feels like a picaresque travelogue, one that checks off a list of chronological events, but doesn't delve deeply into any of them. It's a lost opportunity because there are so many events in Lane's life that could benefit from the kind of wry but respectful observations I've seen in earlier Bagge fiction.

Bagge's afterward, on the other hand, is a wealth of great resources for further study of the people Rose journeyed with, with fun and insightful observations and commentary. For Bagge fans and Lane fans, the book is a must, despite its faults.

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Recently Read: Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser

 

For anyone who's read Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books, Caroline Fraser's biography of Wilder pulls back the curtain on what was true, false and romanticized in that beloved series and goes far in researching and clarifying who wrote the books and how they were written. Meticulously researched, its 500 page plus text footnoted, Fraser goes beyond Wilder's life to give historical, political, and social contexts; tracing Wilder's family back to the 17th century, Fraser reveals character traits which carried through till the last of the family's members, in the late 1960s.

Of necessity, Prairie Fires is also the story of Wilder's daughter and sometimes collaborator Rose Wilder Lane, a complex and somewhat tragic, larger than life world adventurer, sufferer of mental illness, reporter, author and, ultimately, a political polemicist who would have been at home and flourished in today's divided climate (in fact, she, in many ways, helped to create it).

Prairie Fires was written with care, precision, artistry and empathy. The Pulitzer Prize it won is well deserved.

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Recently Read: West from Home: Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, San Francisco, 1915

 

A short but packed collection of letters Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote home to her husband Almanzo in 1915, West From Home details her train ride from Missouri to San Francisco, the stay with her professional writer daughter, Rose, and their frequent visits to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.

This book, also containing relevant photographs from the era, will appeal to those interested in San Francisco history, those interested in the 1915 world's fair, and those interested in the further adventures of Laura. Her descriptions of the fair and beyond are captivating, and they're mixed (never intending to be published) with recommendations to Almanzo about the upkeep of their farm, her descriptions of Rose's working life, and an under-the-surface concern that Rose and her partially out of work husband may not be able to pay back a major loan to her and Almanzo.

West From Home compels me to want to read more of Laura's writing, more of Rose's work (she hobnobbed with violinist Fritz Kreisler, Henry Ford and other famous artists and celebrities) and biographies of both. The family's upward mobility, from Laura and her family barely surviving the deadly 1880 "Long Winter" to Rose being a successful author in one generation is astonishing. In 1915, the "Little House" books were in both author's futures and it will be fascinating to learn more about the collaborative process that enabled them to be written and published.

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Recently Read: On the Way Home, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

 

A diary kept (and unintended for publication) by Laura Ingalls Wilder, On the Way Home details the covered wagon trip her, Almonzo, young daughter Rose and some fellow adventurers took from De Smet, South Dakota (where their luck had long ago ran out) to Mansfield, Missouri, where they would live for the rest of their lives.

Containing observations on the towns they traveled through, the people they met, the worthiness (or unworthiness) of the countryside, Wilder's short notes will be of interest to those who have read the nine "canon" Wilder books and want to know what Laura and Almonzo did next. What really makes it a worthwhile read is the context Rose gives the diary. The text is accompanied by photographs of the family and contemporary pictures of the towns they traveled through, along with a map of their travels, easily referenced with the text. An afterward by Rose really brings the book to life and we realize while reading it that the "voice" of Laura in this book series has been, at least partly, the voice of Rose all along. It's like seeing a curtain drawn revealing the machinery inside. Rose's memories of the homecoming are vivid, full of emotion and suspense. Especially effective is Rose's explanation of a photograph (included in the book) taken of her at the age of two years and four months. Rose remembers the annoying occasion with clarity and sharp wit.

I will be interested to learn, in biographies of Laura and Rose, to what extent Rose shaped the sound and structure of Laura's writing. I'm guessing it was substantial - a fact that, however interesting, does nothing to dispel the quality and the magic of the books. 

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Recently Read: The First Four Years, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

 

Laura Ingalls Wilder's The First Four Years was found in the late '60s as a first draft, unfinished, unvarnished. It was published not only after Wilder's death, but also the death of her daughter, Rose, who had collaborated with her mother on the series, giving the other "Little House" books a narrative flow and romantic sheen.

There's no romantic sheen here - just stark, brutal reality, and it's best read remembering that it's a first draft. Events are described, but rarely elaborated on for long before the next event. And many of those events in Laura and Almonzo's first four years of marriage were harsh: blight and debt and poverty, losing a child, their house burning down. Ma and Pa Ingalls are now far away, both geographically and emotionally, and barely make an appearance. There's virtually no mention of Laura's sisters. Almonzo is nearly unrecognizable. The smart, confident, well-planning fellow who literally saved his town's lives in The Long Hard Winter now seems emotionally distant, and a victim of the elements of nature, with physical problems, financial hardship and the sort of bad luck Pa Ingalls experienced for decades.

The First Four Years is, frankly, a hard book to digest in comparison to the rest of the series, though likely more emotionally truthful to the ways hardship ruled Laura's life at the time. I question Harper & Row's decision to package it with the rest of the series, marketed to children, as the tone is so extraordinarily different. I'm glad that it was published, though, as it gives insight into Wilder's life from a different perspective. Garth Williams' illustrations are as beautiful as ever - a good thing, since most of the shimmering poetry in earlier book's text is missing here.

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Recently Read: These Happy Golden Years, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

 

The last "real" book in the Little House series (The First Four Years was published posthumously, decades later, and was only a first draft), These Happy Golden Years covers several years of Laura Ingalls' life, concentrating on her school teaching career (and staying with a homicidally depressed and angry wife), Almonzo Wilder's slow and determined courtship of Laura, and her leaving home for good. The book's portrayal of the bittersweet process of growing to adulthood and forging your own life is especially worth reading by young readers, but all ages can appreciate it. The novel does have a tonal problem at odds with the rest of the series; during Almonzo and Laura's copious time together, including countless buggy rides, we're rarely given glimpses of what Laura's thinking about Almonzo or their time together. The character, for the first time in the series, becomes a cypher. This is especially strange because the book is autobiographical, and who would better know what Laura Ingalls was thinking about than the author, Laura Ingalls? The end of the book also seems blurred, with a sudden, rushed wedding (Laura's parents weren't even invited).

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Recently Read: Little Town on the Prairie

Little Town on the Prairie, while continuing Laura Ingalls Wilder's always interesting and entertaining autobiographical story, excels at portraying a community coming to life. The few businesses in the town of De Smet, South Dakota described in the last book in the series have now become a full-blown town, with homesteading settlers coming from far and wide. A church is built, community societies are created and the school is getting too small for its students. Western culture is forged in the isolated town, a sign that its residents are prosperous enough to have free time for pleasure. (A minstrel show Pa Ingalls takes part in is cringe-worthy, to be sure, but it's faithful to what transpired.) It's also interesting to see teenagers from the 19th century so conscious of fashions, new technologies and jealousy-inducing trends.

Laura, meanwhile, is approaching adulthood, striving for a teaching certificate so as to earn money to keep her blind sister, Mary, in college. Laura's younger sisters, Carrie and Grace, also begin to come into their own, and her future husband, Almanzo Wilder, is already attempting to court her (though she doesn't seem to realize it).

This isn't the most dramatic book of the series, but a fine addition to it.

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Recently Read: The Long Winter, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The winter of 1880–1881 is called "The Snow Winter", one of the most severe seasons in US history. A succession of blizzards from October through March of the next year kept frontier families secluded; some froze to death. The Chicago and North Western Railway stopped running trains altogether because they were stuck in mounds of snow taller than the trains themselves, leaving whole towns without food and supplies.

The Long Winter, continuing from the previous book, By the Shores of Silver Lake, has the Ingalls family moving to the newly built town, De Smet, in hopes of surviving the winter. Even proximity to other townspeople is little help in blinding, relentless storms. Laura's future husband, Almanzo Wilder, plays a larger role in this chapter, author Wilder intermittently switching the viewpoint away from Laura's narrative in mid-story for the first time in the series.

As the weather is unrelenting, so is the novel's suspense. It's not a joyful read; young readers may find this book too disturbing or depressing. As a slightly modified document of a time and place in history, though, it's fine writing.

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Recently Read: By the Shores of Silver Lake, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Some children's books begin in happiness and end in tragedy. By the Shores of Silver Lake, the fifth book in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House book series, is the opposite. The first chapter isn't finished before one tragedy is reported and another transpires (no spoilers here). I believe it may be here when my granddaughter (age seven) stopped reading the series.

Though not as strong as the previous volumes, Silver Lake captivates with the family moving to what will be De Smet, South Dakota. The building of a railroad through the territory and the commerce and small population which follows it result in a town quickly coming to life out of and in the wilderness. The long descriptions of the building of the railroad will surely try many readers' patience (they did mine); a rare miscalculation in the construction of this volume. The vivid evocation of the area, though, with its lake, wolves, myriad birds and many-textured terrain will remain with the reader. As Laura grows older, the novel also touches on union conflicts, the decimation of the buffalo population, drunken homesteaders, and Laura and a friends' first interest in the opposite sex. Appropriately, her future husband, Almanzo Wilder, makes a cameo appearance.

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Recently Read: On the Banks of Plum Creek, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

In the fourth book in the Little House series, Laura and her family travel to Minnesota, first to live in an underground dugout, and then in a newly built house. Charles Ingalls borrowed the money to build the house, against a wheat crop that never comes to fruition, one of the many casualties of the worst attack of grasshoppers in US history.

Like Laura's previous books, Plum Creek is a mixture of hardship and simple joys, beautifully and vividly described. Anyone of any age can be enriched by this memoir of everyday pioneer life.

Two parents in the Fort Garry School Division in Winnipeg complained about the book in 1997, due to its references to Native Americans. The eradication of the book from the school was denied. What a world!

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Recently Read: Little House in the Big Woods

The first book in Wilder's series, taking place in 1871, is at the same time romanticized and realistic, and perfect for children and adults with an open mind. It tells of growing up in the Wisconsin wilderness with siblings and two loving parents, surrounded by dangerous predators. Life is harsh, sometimes brutal, and the ways in which the family uses everything around them, organic or not, to survive is educational and fascinating. The narrative is also filled with tales of the past and premonitions of the future (such as new technology which saves days worth of hard work). The illustrations by Garth Williams are lovely, as always, and were based on his visits to the locations described in the text.

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