The Long Winter (1940)

I'm so happy I reread this.

This has been my favorite book of the series, aside from Farmer Boy. It’s a little surprising, perhaps, since most of the action involves the Ingalls family stuck inside during various blizzards between October and April of one winter season.

The story starts with Pa “making hay while the sun shines,” and Laura talking him into letting her work. She does the hard work and proves herself equal to the task. While Pa is in town one day, a Native American man gives an ominous warning, and while several men seem uncomfortable with him or dubious of his tidings, Pa Ingalls doesn’t hesitate to believe him or act on his words, and try to assuage his wife’s discomfort and hatred at the source of the warning. The Ingalls family moves to town, and the impending battle between man and nature begins.

Usually these books are filled with the daily life of a farm, the chores to be done, the entertainment available, the simplicity of life. But none of that is really available to them in town. Laura and Carrie go to school and find that they like it, but that ends abruptly when a blizzard kicks up while they’re in class, and they have to make their way back to town in the blinding storm.

The rest of the action consists mostly of the family working to stay warm, Pa and Ma having to be creative in how they provide food and heat and a little bit of fun to the house. Action outside their home tends to involve Almanzo and Roy Wilder, brothers and a new addition to the town. Almanzo especially gets to show off his grit and determination, and maybe a little foolhardiness, as he risks his life to provide food for the town so that he can hold onto his seed that he brought especially from Minnesota to plant in the spring.

This book really shows the author’s writing ability. She always has been plain spoken and clear, with a talent for instruction and hints of poetry, but her ability to grip her reader with a family pent up in a cold house is exceptional. I could feel Laura’s rising stress and frustration, the bleakness and tedium of the days, and especially toward the end when Laura didn’t want to eat or do much of anything proved that the mental burden of living on a homestead in newly settled part of the country was at least as heavy as the physical burden.



( )

The Long Winter is my second favorite Little House on the Prairie book it is a must read if you are a Laura Ingalls Wilder fan. This book is fascinating with all the problem solving that has to be done in it. Just make sure you are in a warm room when you read it because it really is a longg winter. ( )

Laura and her family face the Dakota Territory blizzards.

So interesting to read this while summer was coming, and think about what the blizzards were like while temps are rising here. When the train finally made it through in the spring and the family got food just as they ran out, my 7 year old son was cheering and nearly crying in jubilation. ( )