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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