Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
My father was a young man when the Depression hit, in 1929. And although the line of work he was in, first building movie stars home, and then working for the studios building sets, did not suffer, the rest of his family did. He was, if not the sole supporter of his family, of his four, then three brothers, and parents, he was at least the main breadwinner. This effected him for the rest of his life. He knew how to pinch pennies like it was no ones business. Although he ended up building a house for the family he had later, in a posh area of L.A., he would still shift through trash cans to find recycling material, on trash day, before recycling was a big thing.
Laura Ingalls Wilder survived not one, not two, but three depressions. We, as a collective we, remember the one in 1929, because our grandparents, and parents remember it. But few today remember the ones that happened in the late 1800s.
Laura did, and she, like my father, knew that there might, and would be another one around the corner, and so stayed as thrifty as she could be, even when her farms in the Ozarks was doing well, and she was relatively comfortable. And, because she had survived, she figured that others could do the same, without government help.
I bring this last point up, because this is a major theme going through this very weighty tome about Laura’s life. The second major theme, that is hammered home, is that the homestead act was a disaster, and caused the Dust Bowl. And because the Homestead act was help from the government, Laura was a hypocrite in later life.
You may think you know about the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder, because you have read all the Little House books, as I have. You may think, well, I have also read the ones that came out after her death, such as On the Way home (her leaving the Dakotas for the Ozarks), West from Home (about her trip to San Francisco to hang out with her daughter Rose), or even Little house in the Ozarks the collection of her columns she was writing for the newspapers, before she wrote the little house books. Yes, I too have read those as well, and yet, much of Prairie Fires covers even more than that. It brings in the history of what was really going on, when her stories were supposed to have taken place, as well as the history of what happened after she left the Dakotas, until, in the height of the depression, she started writing about her life, to bring in a little more money.
Have you ever wondered why The First Four Years is so very, very different from all her other books? This book answers that question. It also explains how the books are really out of order, how Little House on the Prairie should have come first, then Little House in the Big Woods.
And although I love her books, and probably always will, it is amazing to see how she and Rose, her daughter, changed the narrative, so that everything was built on self-reliance, that no one ever needed a hand out if they all stuck together, and by gum, you could have a farm, and make a living, and it was all good, despite that not being how it ended up.
Warning, this is a long, and weighty book, filled with footnotes, and citations, and a boat-load of research.
Highly recommend it to all of those of us who grew up on these stories. Everyone should add this book to their collection.
Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.