Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957)

Reading this story as an adult it really is striking how different the hard lives of isolated settlers were from our modern society. The book is a stark reminder that we don't know how easy we have it - we might be isolating away because of COVID, but that is a drop in the ocean compared to living in a small family of two adults and three children in a log cabin in the middle of the woods, responsible for all your own food, and spending the winters indoor with snow piled around the show more house.

Told from the point of view of Laura as a 4 year old, the story is almost too saccharine to be true. Pa hunts and reaps, tells stories, and plays his fiddle. Ma works hard but cheerfully, churning butter, washing, cooking.

The children mostly behave, and when they are not perfect there is a swift beating (which all feel is well deserved, and has been handed down the generations - pa tells the stories of when his pa beat him), in a way that seems excessive to modern sensibilities - whipping a four year old with a strap for striking her sister once who was tormenting her! There is a good sprinkling of morality tale too - their cousin is a lazy boy who cries wolf and doesn't help and no-one believes him when he gets stung all over by bees.

The sheer skill that everyone has - how to make butter, how to cure skins, how to smoke meat, how to carve wood, how to tap maple syrup, hot to make hats etc etc - is really impressive. Having dabbled a bit in home crafts makes me even more in awe.

But then it really was all life and death, wasn't it? It is a lovely story, sugar swirls poured on snow, dances, rag dolls. But you don't see the women giving birth in the wilderness, and you don't see the time the bear doesn't wander away, or the time there isn't enough food to get through winter.

The environmental position is interesting. There is the time Pa holds his hand from shooting, because of the splendour of the stag and the bear. There is the fact they eat no meat all summer, to allow the young animals time to grow. But there is no suggestion that it isn't the right thing to do to smash up the bee hive and take all the honey (the bees will find another tree, and start again with the left over honey scraps), and there is great joy in the wonderful threshing machine.

In general, a fascinating slice of life from a very different world. show less

Laura, Mary, Pa, Ma, Baby Carrie, and their trusty dog, Jack leave the Wisconsin woods and strike out for territories west. They pick a spot, build a new house, and start a new life, only to be told they've settled in Indian Territory and must move on.
I *loved* these books as a kid, but it's been a long time since I read them and I'd forgotten about the not-so-great attitude toward Native Americans. Well, it did start some good conversations with Charlie about dated literature and how those show more attitudes change and how we can still appreciate a story and still be aware of its shortcomings. show less

She thought to herself, "This is now."

"Little House" is another stop on my casual journey to read classic children's books that I should have read when I was a kid. Merely 50+ years late.

This project started in earnest when I made a friend, a booktuber, who did read all those books as a kid. Some she read many, many times over. Among all sorts of books she reads now, she discusses and still cherishes the childhood ones on her channel too. Once I asked her what would a book have to contain show more to be perfect for her as a lifelong reader. She answered that it had already been written. It was the Little House on the Prairie books.

So now I feel part of that cozy Love Wilder tribe. This tale of family and friends is kind and joyful. The many preparations for each season and their self-reliance is astounding. Hard-working doesn't even begin to describe what life must have been like for them. Makes me plumb ashamed at how much complaining I do over mere inconveniences. I admire that combination of goodness and fortitude.

The beautiful spirit in this book might be considered naive. But, like time with my friend, it is invigorating, even healing, to be wrapped in kindness and joy.

I do have to laugh, though: what an unintentional contrast it makes to the very last book I finished, Independent People! It was also a great book about self-sufficiency, but with an ironic view. It could hardly be more different than Wilder's.

I wouldn't ever pit the viewpoint of the two stories against each other, one right one wrong. Since time immemorial there are all kinds of experiences available in this world and reading gives us access to many lives and ways of living. Our own reality is, like those writers, a canvas.

And so, like little Laura Wilder, this is my now,, one that has real hardships but also has an overflowing fullness of simple joys. One of the duties to being alive is to actually be alive. show less

“There were no more lessons. There was nothing in the world but cold and dark and work and coarse brown bread and wind blowing. The storm was aways there, outside the walls, waiting sometimes, then pouncing, shaking the house, roaring, and snarling, and screaming in rage.”

These recollections of frontier life, its hardships and joys, the importance of friends and neighbors and community, and most of all family, are beloved for good reason, withstanding the test of time to become classics show more still read today. There isn’t much that hasn’t been said about them, both in deserved praise and affection — and, sadly, on the other end of the spectrum, ridiculousness when modern day values, mores, and conventions are applied with no historical perspective whatsoever.

I doubt I can add much of anything new to the praise, other than to say that The Long Winter is my personal favorite among these books from Laura Ingalls Wilder. It’s wonderful, and were it complete fiction, it would still be considered a classic. The fact that it’s based on real events only adds resonance to it.

The Long Winter is almost claustrophobic, as the reader feels trapped in this endless winter of intermittent blizzards that will bring families, and an entire town, to the brink of starvation. Yet it is also like a soft heavy blanket in which to wrap ourselves up in and stave off the hardships of life. It is a winter so harsh that Laura’s family must move into town for safety, and weather blizzards so cold and frightening that winter can only be defeated — and then, only just — by pioneer spirit and sticking together.

The inventive ways they keep going, adapting to each new setback as the train with supplies has one disheartening delay after another until they seem doomed, is a true testament to courage and love. It becomes increasingly bleak, and finally tremendously exciting as Almonzo and Cap set out in the short window between blizzards to find grain on a farm which may be only a rumor; and a suicide mission borne of the kind of humanity missing completely today in a certain part of the world.

More than any of the other books in the series, which are all great, I think this one really captures that life so well that had Wilder not written any others, this would still be considered a classic. I can’t say enough good things about this book. From the sadness of Pa’s cracked and swollen fingers that will no longer play the fiddle to keep the family’s spirits up, to the truly thrilling, edge-of-your-seat quest by Almonzo and Cap to save everyone in town from starvation, it is about as perfect a read, heartwarming and uplifting, that you’ll ever come across. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings beautiful memoir, Cross Creek, of a later time, is more lyrical certainly, and lovelier in the use of language, but The Long Winter is just as impactful in its own manner, and a must-read. Wonderful. show less