Caroline Fraser

By the end of the book, it convinced me that the style—combining personal recollection of a Pacific Northwest childhood with an abusive father; the activities of serial killers for the same decades; and the extent of heavy-metal pollution in the area—had something to say. While correlation is not causation, there is a lot of correlation between high lead & other heavy metal exposure and violent behavior, especially among men. Fraser calls it “helter smelter.” What’s not here: show more anything we might know about the biological mechanisms involved; attention to people who might’ve gotten moved farther up the violence bell curve from toxic exposures but didn’t graduate to serial killer-dom. Also, there are clearly cultural/social interactions here—a society in which it’s easy to pack up the car and move away is one that makes it relatively easy to get away with murder, as is a society that doesn’t care very much about women’s safety except as a way to control them. show less

Grim.

The lives of small-time farmers that were venerated in the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder contain a bitter truth: there is no way to make a living on the prairie without government aid (rarely forthcoming) or tens of thousands of dollars already in your bank account. And the dark secret of the "Little House" series is that the Ingalls family did not make it. Charles and Caroline repeatedly took chances with their money, their labor, and the safety of their children, and none of those show more chances paid off; they never did make it as farmers on the prairie. Once Laura marries and has started a life of her own there is hope that circumstances will ease, but she has quite the daddy complex and marries a man just like Charles: one determined to be a farmer in a part of the country that is too arid to sustain crops, and one who is a spendthrift to boot. Life is grim and stays that way, and eventually a daughter named Rose grows up to cause a whole host of problems.

For readers who grew up on the "Little House" books (as I did) this book is scandalous and fascinating and touching and grim. The author is thorough and precise in the details, and gives much-needed context to a life that we all thought we knew. A must-read.

Merged review:

Grim.

The lives of small-time farmers that were venerated in the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder contain a bitter truth: there is no way to make a living on the prairie without government aid (rarely forthcoming) or tens of thousands of dollars already in your bank account. And the dark secret of the "Little House" series is that the Ingalls family did not make it. Charles and Caroline repeatedly took chances with their money, their labor, and the safety of their children, and none of those chances paid off; they never did make it as farmers on the prairie. Once Laura marries and has started a life of her own there is hope that circumstances will ease, but she has quite the daddy complex and marries a man just like Charles: one determined to be a farmer in a part of the country that is too arid to sustain crops, and one who is a spendthrift to boot. Life is grim and stays that way, and eventually a daughter named Rose grows up to cause a whole host of problems.

For readers who grew up on the "Little House" books (as I did) this book is scandalous and fascinating and touching and grim. The author is thorough and precise in the details, and gives much-needed context to a life that we all thought we knew. A must-read. show less

The Little House books, for all the hardships they describe, are paeans to the pioneer spirit, portraying it as triumphant against all odds. But Wilder’s real life was harder and grittier than that, a story of relentless struggle, rootlessness, and poverty. It was only in her sixties, after losing nearly everything in the Great Depression, that she turned to children’s books, recasting her hardscrabble childhood as a celebratory vision of homesteading—and achieving fame and fortune in show more the process, in one of the most astonishing rags-to-riches episodes in American letters.

Spanning nearly a century of epochal change, from the Indian Wars to the Dust Bowl, Wilder’s dramatic life provides a unique perspective on American history and our national mythology of self-reliance. With fresh insights and new discoveries, Prairie Fires reveals the complex woman whose classic stories grip us to this day. show less

Totally fascinating biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the story behind the writing of the Little House books. Some of the information, especially about her early life, I had read before in Donald Zochert's work, Laura, but the second half of the book was new to me. I loved reading about the relationship between Laura and her daughter, Rose, and the way their politics influenced their writing. I'm not sure I would have been friends with them, mostly due to their attitude towards the poor show more (strange considering Laura was poor for most of her life) but it was fascinating nonetheless. show less