Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder Hardcover – November 21, 2017

Laura Ingalls Wilder's books tell a story that is both true and misleading, the product of a strange and tortured collaboration between Laura and her daughter Rose. Told in full, it would have been a tale full of misery, mistakes and tragedy, relieved by stoic endurance and loyalty. It wouldn't have been published. Wilder struggled to turn her family's pioneer story into the inspiring, heart-warming, heroic tale that fills the Little House books. Caroline Fraser adds context beyond the much-discussed question of the true authorship of the books, placing the pioneer epic in the larger frame of conflicts between settlers and Indians, and North and South, then exploring the later role of the pioneer story in the politics and myth-making of the nation and the world. The reaction against Wilder's books that has led to her name being taken off at least one school named in her honor shocks the books' fans, but Fraser shows how Rose used the stories for her own political purposes, and the US promoted them as propaganda after World War II. Wilder herself slanted the books to bolster the image of the settlers as an ideal model for America. And yet, Fraser's affection for the books and their author shows through her admission of their myopic worldview, omissions, and outright fabrications. Her sympathies clearly lie with Laura rather than with Rose, and she provides evidence against later claims that Rose was the true author of the books.

The surprises of the book for me are in the details of Rose's life and politics and how she leveraged Laura's books to further her Libertarian views, even beyond her death.

My own grandmother was born in a log cabin in Wisconsin, and she married my grandfather, whose family homesteaded not far from Walnut Grove. Another grandfather was born in a sod house in Nebraska. My mother grew up in circumstances as difficult as much that Wilder described. When Wilder presents the pioneer story while minimizing or totally ignoring the plight of the displaced and murdered Native Americans, she is telling the tale as my family would have told it. Fraser expands the view to encompass what we must admit if we are honest: our success and wealth were built on the suffering of real people. These sections of Fraser's book aren't comfortable to read, but they are necessary to put the controversy about Wilder's books in context.

Fraser doesn't hide her own political leanings, as she weaves her rejection of Ayn Rand's philosophy into the discussion of Rose's friendship with Rand and Rose's editing of Laura's later books to introduce Randian themes. I found that enlightening and interesting. Some people won't agree.

Read this book if you are a fan of Wilder's books. If you know Wilder only from the TV series, read Wilder's books first. (I thoroughly enjoyed Fraser's take-down of the TV series, which I never saw but did read about.)

I enjoyed Prairie Fire. It didn't make me dislike Wilder's books, or even have a lower opinion of Laura - - though it certainly didn't make me like Rose. I'm giving it four rather than five stars because of a little discomfort with how openly the author's biases, most of which I actually share, are expressed.

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder Hardcover – November 21, 2017
by Caroline Fraser (Author)

Where did the Ingalls come from? Why did they really leave their Little House in the Big Woods? Why did Pa keep relocating his family, starting afresh, again and again? What happened to their extended family? Did wolves really run with Pa and besiege their home? How did that Homesteading Act work, could you really get free land? Why did Pa's farming always fail? Did Laura really love Almanzo, and what happened to them after their marriage? Why did they only have one child? How did they end up in Missouri, and how did they manage to keep that farm? Why did Laura start writing, and did she get rich? Did her daughter really write all the books? Are they racist? How conservative are they, and what is the connection to the Libertarians? Where do the profits go today?

My background: I read all the LIW books as a child, and had them read to me. We watched the TV show. As an adult I read the entire series to my children. Twice. And I'll read them again for my youngest. The books I read are my wife's, from her childhood, falling apart, read to death. I pre-ordered the annotated autobiography "Pioneer Girl" and devoured it. And I leapt at the chance to read and review this new biography. I live in the heart of the "Big Woods." An hour's drive East of my house is Pepin, site of the Little House. An hour south is Spring Valley where Almanzo's family lived. The Zumbro river runs under my porch and canoeing downstream takes me to South Troy where Laura and her cousins waded, and where baby Freddie is buried.

As an adult I wondered about the "real Laura" and I learned much from the annotated Pioneer Girl, Laura's original autobiography. But that book is dominated by Laura's narrative, and there's only so much that editorial commentary can correct or expound when entire facets of her life were simply omitted. In any case, Pioneer Girl ended at Laura's marriage, at the very beginning of her long adult life.

Enter Caroline Fraser and "Prairie Fires," a biography of two women, a textual history of their work, and the historical context of their times skillfully interwoven as a narrative. It is no exaggeration to call this a tour de force! The author has apparently made it her life's work (e.g. The Prairie Queen, New York Review Books, circa 1994) to learn everything that can be known about Laura Ingalls Wilder, including her family, her daughter, her times, and even the natural history of the Midwest. Reading this is to journey with Pa, Laura, Almanzo and Rose from the pioneering days of breaking prairie sod, through the 1890's depression, the populist era, the roaring twenties, the depression, WWII, and into the recognizably modern 1950's.

Prairie Fires starts strong, with genealogical research harking back to the colonial Pilgrim era, then flashing forwarding to the Dakota War of 1862 (a skirmish of which wiped out the Dustin family just ten miles from my childhood home, six months *after* the mass-execution at Mankato). As an aside, I don't think I've ever read a more fair exposition of that war, and the book is practically worth the price for that chapter alone. In this case the clichés are quite true: there was ample blame on all sides, but the Dakota lost and so they got the worst of it in the end.

From a formidable opening Ms. Fraser runs to strength on strength. For me the book was literally a page turner, I couldn't put it down, took it on vacation, read it in every spare moment, several times hiding in the bathroom just to get to the end of a chapter. I lost sleep, and got really clean from taking long baths. I finished it in ten days. The writing is so good I literally choked at the end, me, a grown man. It answered all the questions I had, and many I never knew I had. Along the way I learned more American history and began to understand just how and why families like the Ingalls went to the frontier. In my mind Laura Ingalls Wilder left "fairyland" and came into the real, recognizable world.

But Prairie Fires is not only about Laura, spilling a considerable amount of ink on her daughter Rose Lane, a very unflattering picture: selfish, immoral, manipulative, petty, mentally ill (manic depressive), dishonest, modestly talented, irreligious (flirting with Islam her whole life), plagiarizing, economically incompetent, politically hypocritical, casually anti-semitic. In a word: a fraud. For all that, we get glimpses of her intermittent success. Lane moved in fairly high political and literary circles, made her living by her writing and would have lived well but for her financial naivety. Without Rose's efforts it's safe to say we would not have Laura's beloved books at all, and Ms. Fraser is a fair reporter for letting that be known.

Yet she comes across as having an "axe to grind" against Lane. You will finish Prairie Fires in no doubt whatsoever about the absurdity of charges that Rose Lane ghost-wrote the LIW series, and you will wonder how it was possible for such a hack to ever make a dime as an author. Ms. Fraser seems generally in favor of collective politics, supportive of Roosevelt's New Deal programs, and bothered by Wilder's criticism thereof. She spends a great deal of energy detailing the misguided attempts by Laura's successors to corral her work into the Conservative/Libertarian cause, and in this she is somewhat successful. But her attempts to explain away the fundamental reasons why people like Laura Wilder resented the very New Deal programs intended to help them come across as feeble and condescending. We read somewhat about a religious heritage of independence going back to the Pilgrims, resentment of land use decrees, and crop destruction. But we hear again and again and again the litany of supposed hypocrisies: the homestead act was a Government Program after all, everyone necessarily took jobs off the farm, the bank where Laura worked administered Government Lending, the frontier was only open thanks to the Army, Pa cheated the Railroad, Almanzo lied on his Homestead Application... and that's about it. It's a mighty thin list to set against decades of hard toil, thrift and scrupulous morality, and it doesn't bear the weight of being Exhibit A in Wilder's Real Politics On Trial.

However, for all that, I'm prepared to be charitable. It's fair to say that while the LIW books may be conservative, they are not Conservative in the modern Far Right sense. Given the attempts of politicians to corral them into their cause, it's forgivable for someone who loves them to over-inoculate against the corresponding charge that they are little better than racist propaganda for Trumpian America. For the sake of readers worldwide, I can excuse Ms. Fraser's going a little over the top.

Oh, and about all those questions? Get the book to get the answers. Happy reading!

I am a Wilder fan, having visited her home twice, taught her books many times, and been quotingly familiar with them since the age of seven. Every time I read any of them to a child, I am still charmed by the truly mesmerizing prose. Whoever spun them, Laura or Rose, they are timeless and a joy. I have also read all their other published writings and assorted articles and biographies. I know the subject.
This book is long, with nearly a hundred pages of small print endnotes, to boot. I devoured it all. It starts strong, giving an account of the Minnesota Massacre, alluded to in one book where Ma quickly turns the conversation to protect little ears--smart move, Ma Ingalls. This author gives us all the back stories and national context we as adult readers want and need. She does explore the push, pull, and tug between Laura and Rose.
After all this valuable light brought to our subject, which is a rocky life covering nearly a century, one comes away, if anything, even more impressed by the resilience of Laura Ingalls. Someway, she did pen her stories into the very best "good parts version" of a life journey that was decidedly mixed. And she did it, in league with her daughter, beginning in later life, in a farmhouse, on Big Chief nickel tablets that are a handicap to write on, besides.
For the real fans among us, and there are many, this book is a delight, even as our hearts are wrenched by the whole truth. One may not read it fast, but one will read it, and learn a lot of American history into the bargain.