Laura Ingalls learned from her parents how to appreciate the simple pleasures in life 'a song, a carpet of wildflowers, a floor swept clean.' Caroline and Charles Ingalls were among the pioneers of the late 1800s who travelled the plains and prairies with their three children Mary, Laura and Carrie looking for land to farm.
It wasn't until she was in her late fifties after the loss of her mother that Laura Ingalls Wilder was able to reflect back on her childhood and find the words to write The Little House on the Prairie which of course became a best-selling children's book and one of the icons of prairie literature.
And what a childhood she had! Moving ever westwards amidst wolves, plagues of grasshoppers, dust storms and sub-zero temperatures with never enough food or money. One of the blizzards they lived through was so bad her father had to shovel snow off of her bed in the morning. One wonders at times why her father put his family through it but the pioneers were a tough breed and Laura adored him.
By twenty-seven she had married Almanzo and finally settled in Missouri. Her daughter Rose became a renowned journalist and biographer, editing her mother's books. She comes across as quite a little madam, too! Laura never forgot her childhood love of the pioneer life and landscape and this is a recurring motif in this superb biography:
Laura Ingalls came to consciousness gazing through the keyhole opening in the cinched canvas covering her family's wagon, swaying over an expanse of prairie grasses as they launched slowly southwest from Missouri to Kansas.
Caroline Fraser has produced a highly readable and enjoyable biography. I now want to re-read Willa Cather's My Antonia, another classic of prairie literature.
Happy Christmas!
