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Fifteen-year-old Laura has found a job as a schoolteacher in a nearby town. She soon realizes that her teaching position isn't quite what she expected. Laura can't wait for Friday afternoons, when Almanzo Wilder arrives to take her home to her family for the weekend. Before she knows it, Laura finds herself thinking of Almanzo in a whole new way.
Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in 1867 in the log cabin described in Little House in the Big Woods. She and her family traveled by covered wagon across the Midwest. Later, Laura and her husband, Almanzo Wilder, made their own covered-wagon trip with their daughter, Rose, to Mansfield, Missouri. There, believing in the importance of knowing where you began in order to appreciate how far you've come, Laura wrote about her childhood growing up on the American frontier. For millions of readers Laura lives on forever as the little pioneer girl in the beloved Little House books.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The last book in the series published before her death.,
By R. D. Allison (dallison@biochem.med.ufl.edu) (Gainesville, Florida, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: These Happy Golden Years (Little House) (Paperback)
This book, which was a 1944 Newbery Honor Book (that is, a runner-up to the Medal winner), continues the autobiography of Mrs. Wilders (1867-1957) through the years 1883 to 1885 when the author was 15 to 18 years old. It begins immediately after the events described in "Little Town on the Prairie"; she immediately begins her career as a school teacher in a very small schoolhouse about twelve miles to the south of De Smet, South Dakota (although South Dakota doesn't become a state until 1889). Through experimentation, practice, and management, she becomes a good school teacher and is able to keep up with her own studies. And, at the same time, earn enough money to help keep her sister Mary in a college for the blind in Iowa. Almanzo Wilder (1857-1949) continues to court her and drives her home each weekend in a horse-drawn sleigh. As time goes by their friendship turns to love and they are married and Laura goes off to Almanzo's homestead to have her own little house on the prairie. Throughout the book, the author continues to include details of frontier/homesteader life that brings that part of our history to life and shows how people worked hard to overcome difficulties, never giving up. In my opinion, this is the best written of all of the books in the series. It also shows the love that Laura and Almanzo truly had for each other.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Laura is Growing Up!,
By
This review is from: These Happy Golden Years (Little House) (Paperback)
'These Happy Golden Years' is an excellent book. One of the best in the Little House series. Laura is growing up and life for her is getting very interesting.The book starts off rough for Laura. In order to make money for Mary's schooling, Laura is going away from home for the first time to teach school. She is staying with a family that has a very bitter wife who is not exactly friendly! When Laura finally returns home she is happy to go back to school, but she is eager to earn more money. So, she helps the town dressmaker on Saturdays. Mary is coming home for summer and Laura is so excited! The only problem is that she is staying with the dressmaker and her daughter out on their claim. Will Laura be able to go home and see Mary!? As the book progresses Almonzo Wilder becomes even more a part of Laura's life. It is so sweet to read these two getting closer and more interested. Laura even helps Almonzo break some horses! This book is interesting and sweet and the ending is wonderful! Pick it up today!
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inspiring yet sad,
By A Customer
This review is from: These Happy Golden Years (Little House) (Hardcover)
I read this series in my early teens. I enjoyed the latter books more because as Laura ages the language advances, so I found the earlier books (especially Little House) boring (but appreciated later). However, the latter books are still my favorite. I found Happy Golden Years sad because at the time I thought that was all I would ever know about Laura's life, that the rest would be a mystery, but I later found The First Four Years and then biographies as well as her own writings depicting events in her adult life (I especially like Little House in the Ozarks). But even though I now know that Laura went on to have a long and happy life (not without hardship), the Happy Golden Years is still sad. This series focused on this wonderful tight-knit family that experienced joy as well as heartache, and now the family is breaking up. It started when Mary left for college in Little Town on the Prairie. She is missed but when she returns for a visit there's the beginning of the realization for Laura that this life she's had, this family she loves, will change and she will eventually leave. It's something she is not comfortable with- it is hard for her to imagine doing anything other than remaining single and staying with her family, teaching school, but as the book progresses so does her realization of change, which becomes acceptance and hope. I love the writing style- it is simple and honest like the lives of the characters. I couldn't help but feel the joy that Laura felt to be at home with her family, the dread with which she faced her first teaching assignment. The warmth on the weekends contrasting with the chill away from home at that horrible teaching assignment. And who is it that is responsible for giving her the respite from that awful place- Almanzo, who first comes to take her home but who ends up taking her away for good. She goes from not giving Almanzo much thought to missing him terribly when he goes East to visit family, so much so that her family, who were her greatest joy and comfort, are little consolation. It seems that most coming-of-age stories these days are cynical and family is usually considered a burden to free oneself from, but this story is not like that at all. I found this book inspiring. Laura is able to have an independent mind and spirit and stay devoted to what matters in her life: family, faith, a strong work ethic, perseverence. The book Little House in the Ozarks is a compilation of articles Laura wrote for a newspaper column, and I see that the qualities of independence, perseverence, and devotion endured throughout her life, so I am reassured that Happy Golden Years was not the end, but in a way it was, and that's why this book is sad.
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