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Prairie Fires

the American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Dec 28, 2017vickmeister rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
As a lifetime fan of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, I am always interested in seeing material that takes a fresh look at Laura, the person, the personal stories that made her way into her books, and the influence of her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. This was a riveting read, placing Laura and her extended family in the context of the broader history happening around them, whether it be regionally, elsewhere in America, or far further afield; and how national events impacted individual lives. Similar in various ways to "Libertarians on the Prairie" by Christine Woodside, which explores the complex and often combative relationship between Laura and her daughter Rose and speculates just how dominant a role Rose had in the creation of the stories that ended up in Laura's books, yet I found this work to be much richer. It was fascinating to read about the various stages of the settlement of the west overlaid over what we know about the Ingalls and Wilder family experiences. Equally engrossing is seeing how events colored Laura's and Rose's personalities so deeply, leading to deeply ingrained character traits and reactive psychological behaviors that seemed to be based in long-ago incidents never forgotten or satisfactorily dealt with on an emotional level. In particular, the relationship between these two women remains an intriguing tangle, with Rose emerging in a particularly unflattering light. You will not look at Laura and her stories in quite the same way again.