By the Shores of Silver Lake

I've been dipping into a reread of the Little House books for a while now (this time is the first, I'm quite sure, since childhood). They have a gentle lyricism to them that surprises me as an adult, and the pioneering details are a delight. It always strikes me now how very close to real, horrible disaster Laura and her family were so much of the time, and how careful the parents are to keep real knowledge of that horror from the children. In this one, for instance, spoiler the family lives the entire winter alone on the prairie with no one else around for hundreds of miles (and later just one other couple nearby). Even a minor medical issue or, say, a fire, would have meant death. And later, when homesteaders start showing up in the show more spring, the family boards them as there is nowhere else. Ma improvises a lock for the girls' bedroom and tells them not to come out in the morning until she calls for them. Because she doesn't want them around the "rough men." As an adult reader, I know that it isn't just hanging out with rough men that Ma is worried about it. Pa is also presented as the one who knows all (how does he know all that stuff?) and who can do no wrong. But reading between the lines, he's kind of cavalier and sometimes downright irresponsible with his family. Much of these books are chilling now, as well as fascinating and pleasant, overall. show less

This might be my favorite of the series so far. From the start of the book we know this is a time of change. Mary has gone blind from scarlet fever, the family rides a train for the first time, they move into a shanty in a railroad town, etc. I love Laura's adventurous spirit. Even when her path crosses with wolves, she's almost more concerned with their welfare than her own.

There are some intense parts in this book as well (SPOILERS AHEAD). The death of their sweet dog Jack, the confrontation of Pa on payday by angry workers, the moment when the youngest Ingalls daughter, Grace, goes missing, and a scuffle when Pa fights to place his claim for their homestead plot. Life on the prairie was not for the faint of heart.

I'm continually show more impressed with Pa's moral compass and the way he treated his wife and daughters. Even though Ma is quiet, he looks to her before making big decisions. They do not allow themselves to go into debt or take charity, but when an opportunity presents itself, like the chance to stay in the surveyor's house for the winter, they aren't too prideful to take it.

I've grown to love the Ingalls family already and can't believe it took me so long to read this series. show less

I forgot how depressing the beginning of this book is, but it picks up quickly. Laura's internal struggle between what she wants to do and what she's supposed to do, between the infinite metaphorical world of her heart and mind and the contained literal world that is her scope as a young woman in the nineteenth century is becoming more central to the stories. My eleven-year-old is re-reading this series again, and I know that her comments to me are just the very tiniest piece of what's going on in her mind about Laura. More and more I'm grateful that my daughter has such good literary friends to help her through her own growing-up.

On her first train ride, Laura tries to comprehend the view out the window: A telegraph wire swooped up and down beyond the window.... Beyond the wire, grasslands and fields and scattered farmhouses went by. They went so fast that Laura could not really look at them before they were gone. In one hour that train would go twenty miles -- as far as the horses traveled in a whole day." On a wagon trip across the wild empty prairie: "Noon ended too soon. Pa led the horses to drink from the creek, while Ma and Laura picked up the eggshells and bits of paper, to leave the place tidy." Laura has never ridden horseback: "Jean's pony seemed larger every minute. It was big and strong enough to kill Laura if it wanted to.... She was so scared to show more ride it that she had to try." Pa is excited about their new home: "'And best of all, Caroline, we're among the very first out here!' But all their talking did not mean anything to the enormous silence of that prairie." This is the one where there are finally hopes that Ma can have neighbors, the family can settle down, and Laura realizes that, since Mary is now blind, Laura is the daughter who will be a teacher in this generation. (Though I do always wonder why it couldn't be Carrie who follows in her mother's footsteps....) Mary is a bit of a prig - but it's probably her way of coping with her new disability. Ma still irons laundry every week - I suppose it's her pride, her way of clinging to her sense of self. Carrie and Grace are nondescript. Pa plays and sings a *lot* of songs, almost none of which I know.

(Of course this is my umpteenth reread, but, I believe, the first since I was a young teen.)" show less

The Ingalls family has seen both joy and hardship since the end of "On the Banks of Plum Creek". Mary has been left blind from a battle with scarlet fever, and a new sister, Grace, has been born. Pa decides to move to a railroad camp in the unsettled Dakota Territory to work as a bookkeeper to earn money. Eventually, Laura, her sisters, and Ma travel by train to join Pa at the spot he's claimed for their new home. They spend a long winter in the surveyor's house, and in the spring, Pa begins to build a store. It's the first building in what will become the town of De Smet. Finally, the Ingalls family's travels by covered wagon are over.

These are all starting to merge a bit. Laura, forever trying to get out of wearing her bonnet and wanting to be out on the prairie. Pa, always on with some new place to live that will be the right place this time.

What actually stands out about this one?

A surprising amount happens between the end of the last book and the start of this one. Everyone has had scarlet fever. Mary has gone blind! And an entire new baby has turned up mostly unremarked on.

There are a lot more people in this book. Some of them are even characters from previous books, managing to cross paths with the Ingalls again.

They go on a train! And Pa gets work helping out with the railroad! It felt like such an anachronism, after all the minimalist wilderness life, to have show more a train, and pay disputes, but I guess it isn’t, and all these things just live together.

Their luck hasn’t really changed. Pa just manages to get their claim in because his friend distracts someone into a fist fight. They get buried in snow while they sleep one night, Pa nearly gets lynched by an angry mob of railway workers, who don’t like being paid two weeks in arrears. Their final claim turns out to be full of mosquitos (well, it is next to a swamp.)

The description of the giant wolf in the moonlight, and the chapter about building the railway with everyone working like a machine are both stunningly good. show less

Never my favorite. I think even as a child I sensed the desperation in Ma at having to move yet again, the family's unstable financial situation, Laura's struggle to become a young woman of purpose and meaning in a world that didn't expect that of her. Dark book, right from the early chapters when we learn Mary is blind, Laura's exposed to "rough men" with her "fast" cousin Lena, and she's forced to give away her childhood doll, Charlotte, that she later finds upended in an icy prairie pool. Lots of pain in this book.