Prairie Fires
A review of

Prairie Fires

The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder

Caroline Fraser • Metropolitan Books • 2017

Laura Ingalls Wilder: Pioneer Redemption 

by David Meyer

Historian Caroline Fraser details the astounding – and Pulitzer Prize–winning – story of Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls Wilder and her Libertarian daughter Rose Wilder Lane.

Biographer and historian Caroline Fraser, editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House series, explains that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Little House on the Prairie novels depict a loving 19th-century American pioneer family whose members remain stalwart and hopeful in the face of unrelenting hardship. Wilder’s books became children’s classics and an excellent television series.

Over time, Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane asserted the truthfulness of every detail, but Fraser uncovers a different story, showing how Wilder’s daughter used these tales for her own purposes.

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    7 years ago
    I do wish this abstract was more balanced. Ms. Fraser inserted quite a bit of her own political agenda into her book which makesbit more editorial rather than factual.