Wilder Life Author Wendy McClure Talks to Beyond Little House

The time has come! Wendy McClure’s book, The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie, has officially been released. The book is being mentioned all over the media, including an interview this morning with Brian Lehrer (listen here). We caught up with our sometime-guest blogger and LauraPalooza panelist to talk with her about the book.

Beyond Little House: Is this book a memoir? What description do you think is most accurate?

Wendy McClure: I saw someone use the term “bibliomemoir” recently and that’s the first thing that’s sounded right. 

BLH: It’s been said that you embarked on the work for this book after Laura Ingalls Wilder “re-entered” your life as an adult. How did that come about?

WM: When my parents moved across the country in 2006, I unearthed my old copy of Little House in the Big Woods at their moving sale in 2006. I hadn’t read it in decades and in fact didn’t re-read it for another two years, but when I finally did I LOVED it. Then [my boyfriend] Chris brought home a box set of the blue paperbacks and I started to read those, and I became seriously hooked.

BLH: Was there a particular moment when did you decided “this is a book I want to write”? 

WM: I decided before I quite knew it myself. While I was rereading all the books I just started telling everyone who would listen that someday I’d visit all the homes where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived and write about the experience. I was only half serious. Then a good friend suggested I write it sooner than “someday” and it just felt right.
 

BLH: What did you write about that, for whatever reason, didn’t make it in? 

WM: Lots of things! I wrote a lot more about the TV show and the way horrible things always seemed to happen to Mary. I had a long passage defending Nellie Oleson in which I pointed out that Laura could be just as conniving as she was. In the end I cut those parts for length. (Ultimately I took out about 70 pages that weren’t working.) 

I also had a few experiences that I wound up leaving out, like the time Chris and I went to see a maple sugaring demonstration at a historical village. I even visited a university theater department and tried on a corset at one point. But somehow these things never translated into prose successfully enough to stay in the book.  

BLH: What sort of Laura fan will like this book?

WM: The kind who spent her childhood wearing her sunbonnet while eating Cocoa Puffs in front of the TV (and pretending the cereal is molasses and cornbread).

BLH: What was an unexpected difficulty you encountered in the course of writing?

WM: Shyness, especially when it came to talking to Laura scholars and experts. I was—and still am—in awe of the all the knowledge in Little House community, and here I was just starting my journey. Everyone I’ve encountered so far has been wonderful, though.

BLH: Any unexpected pleasures?

WM: I was terrified of writing about Rose—she seemed bitter and difficult and that gigantic William Holtz book about her [Ghost in the Little House] was so daunting to read. But when I traveled to a very intimidating work trip to a book trade show in Italy (which, at the age of 38, was my first time in Europe), I was reading about her overseas travels at the same time. It helped so much to read excerpts of her work at night in my hotel room. It was like I had a travel companion.  

BLH: What resources did you turn to in the course of writing?

WM: I read just about all the biographies—Bill Anderson, Pamela Smith Hill, John Miller—and, of course The Little House Cookbook by Barbara Walker! Bill Anderson’s A Little House Guidebook was a great travel resource, as was Beyond Little House, and Nansie Cleavland’s Pioneer Girl blog and Sarah Sue Uthoff’s Trundlebed Tales site always gave me things to think about. I also became fascinated with the Lehman’s catalog, which stocks churns and oil lamps and all kinds of things.

BLH: You’ve marketed and built an audience for the book, at first anonymously, using the Twitter handle @halfpintingalls. How did that come about? (And how many followers do you have at present? Including Melissa Gilbert and Alison Arngrim — yes?)

WM: I started the @HalfPintIngalls “Twittergraph” months before I decided to write the book, so it wasn’t a marketing move—I was just doing it for my own amusement at first. I’m trying not to make her into just a commercial for the book and simply have fun like always. Half Pint is up to nearly 8700 followers now, including, yes, Melissa Gilbert and Alison Arngrim! Every time they retweet a HalfPintIngalls post it makes my day.

BLH: You write about your boyfriend (now fiancée), Chris, who truly seems to be the unsung hero of this story. How important was he to the writing of this book?

WM: Extremely important. He really has a “just go for it” philosophy (like Pa!), whereas I’m very cautious (like, well, Ma). As soon as he saw that box set of blue Little House paperbacks he just went ahead and bought it for me, but if had been me in the store there’s a very good chance that I would have told myself, “oh, who knows when I’ll get around to reading those,” and talked myself out of buying them.  But Chris has taught me a lot about how to follow my heart, and he always seemed to know I needed the books, and, later, that I needed to see the homesites and write this book.

BLH: Be honest: Are you tired of all Laura, all the time?

WM: I’m not tired of talking about her and Rose—that part’s a blast. But I am getting a little sick of people asking me if churn butter all the time. Everyone asks that! Or they ask me to pose for pictures in a sunbonnet. But I guess I brought that on myself.