These Happy Golden Years (Little House) (original 1943; edition 1953)

A lovely warm fuzzy end to the series. (Yeah, I know there are more now, but this feels like the ride-off-into-the-sunset book- [b:The First Four Years (Little House, #9)|77765|The First Four Years (Little House, #9) |Laura Ingalls Wilder|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266467290s/77765.jpg|11181] has always struck me as coda.)

Deliciously scary buggy rides. Buttoned-up romance. The huge cultural divide from them to me is easier and more interesting to explore in this book because there is little overtly obnoxious (no minstrel shows, no harsh comments from Ma) and much that has changed completely. There's a lot of preaching, again- I wonder if the story arc, growing steadily more Christian, mirrors an actual change in the family's piety or just a growing awareness of it on Laura's part.

There's also a great deal of suffering and self-denial, some of which seems nonsensical to this modern eye. I suspect it's a cultural divide, again, but what was so awful about having emotions? Why was that not okay?

The writing, as in the entire series, is solid as a rock. It's the philosophy which has given me pause this time through. ( )

See review for Little House #1 ( )

Laura is growing up. At age 15 she has accepted her first teaching job, but it is too far away for Pa to drive her home for the weekends. Enter Almanzo Wilder, a bachelor from town and a friend of Pa's. Laura thinks that the drives are purely for her father's sake, but soon learns that Almanzo has plans for their future, together.

This story is mainly about Laura being courted by Almanzo, and is as much a delight to read as the other Little House books. ( )

When we meet up with Laura again she is fifteen years old and off to teach school at the Brewster settlement, twelve miles away. This is a period of great confusion for her. On the one hand, she is still a child, wanting to go to school to learn and to be with friends. On the other hand, she is a young adult, wanting to teach school to earn money for her family. Mary is away at a school for the blind and needs help with tuition. As she says, "only yesterday she was a schoolgirl; now she was a schoolteacher" (p 1). During this time Laura's fashion sense is becoming more adult with floor-length dresses and fancy hats. She takes up sewing on Saturdays to earn money for new clothes. She is starting the receive the attention of Almanzo Wilder as well. While this attention is, at first, unsettling to Laura she begins to look forward to his cutter (winter) and buggy (summer) rides. Soon they are courting under the guise of taming wild horses, but I don't think I will be spoiling anything to admit their inevitable engagement seemed sudden and uneventful to me.
Probably the most interesting part of the story was when Laura was negotiating her wedding vows with Almanzo. She doesn't want the ceremony to include the word "obey" in it. Almanzo is fine with that but when Laura learns the reverend also feels strongly about not including the vow of "obey" she is shocked. Yet she is not a feminist. She doesn't want the privileged of voting. Interesting. ( )

"These Happy Golden Years" is one of my favorites in the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It picks up with Laura when she is 15 years old as she starts teaching for the first time and travels away from home. The center of the book is really the courtship between herself and her future husband, Almanzo Wilder. Like many other books in the series, it's a fascinating look at life as a pioneer out west -- it's particularly interesting to see how the country around the Ingalls family grows as well. ( )