Tell us on Facebook or in the comments here: What were the best parts of LauraPalooza 2010?

We told you about Melissa Gilbert’s Prairie Tale: A Memoir last year. Melissa played the part of “Laura” on the popular television series Little House on the Prairie.

Alison Arngrim, better known as Nellie Oleson, has written Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated. The book will be released next month, and Alison will be signing copies at Walnut Grove, Minnesota, on July 24, 2010.

And Melissa Sue Anderson (Mary) has just released her own autobiography, The Way I See It: A Look Back at my Life on Little House. Little House fans won’t want to miss her interview on the Today Show.

If the embedded video does not work, visit the Today Show website here, and scroll forward to 8:44 am.

Hi there,

I was wondering whether you would be able to help me. I have been looking around for a biography about Laura Ingalls Wilder, but there seem to be so many. I was wondering if you would be able to recommend one (or two) that I should definitely read?

Also, I have read here and there that Laura wrote an autobiography that was rejected by publishers. Do you know if there are any plans to publish this now, as this is something I would dearly love to read?

Many thanks for your help.

Kind regards,

Estelle

Dear Estelle,

Many biographical accounts of Laura’s life have been written, from booklet to book form. Gift shops atLaura’s homesites sell various William Anderson-penned booklets relating to different aspects of Laura’s life, among them “The Story of the Ingalls” and “Laura Wilder of Mansfield.”

The first book-length biography was Donald Zochert’s Laura: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in the early 1970s. It contains a lot of previously unknown details about her life behind what she revealed in the Little House series and is heavily based on the “Pioneer Girl” manuscript.

Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Woman Behind the Legend, by John Miller (who will be speaking at 2010’s LauraPalooza), investigates Laura’s emergence as a writer in Mansfield, Missouri, where she lived from age 27 until her death.

Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life by Pamela Smith Hill (also a keynote speaker at this year’s LauraPalooza) is the most recent biography published about Laura. It takes a literary standpoint, exploring the writer-editor relationship between Laura and her journalist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, as Laura began to make a name for herself in children’s fiction.

Although somewhat dense and academic, William Holtz’s The Ghost in the Little House, a biography of Rose, is exhaustively researched and contains quite a bit of information about Laura that hadn’t been previously published.

“Pioneer Girl” is the unpublished manuscript you’ve heard about that was rejected by publishers (though at one point The Saturday Evening Post considered publishing it in serial form). A version of it is available for research and study purposes at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa. You can go to the Hoover’s research center yourself to read it (and reams of other Wilder/Lane documents housed there) or you can contact them and they can copy it and mail it to you. This is not cheap: the copy fees alone will run you over a hundred dollars.

Given the expense, you may want to wait. We’ve recently learned of definite plans for an official publication of “Pioneer Girl” at last. We’ll keep you posted as we learn more

As for which published biography is better than the others, I think it’s best to leave it to the readers.

LIW fans, let’s help Estelle out. What’s your opinion on Laura’s biographies? When you really feel like sitting down and reading about Laura, which one do you pick up? Make sure to tell us why.

Guest post by Laura Welser

I remember, like it was yesterday (and, believe me, it wasn’t!), the very first time I read this book. When I came to these last few chapters, I couldn’t help but feel joy and relief along with the family. The long, hard winter was over and they survived! Life would go on and they were ready to celebrate with their good friends, the Boasts.

Pa brought groceries that afternoon – that’s how the chapter begins. That one sentence says it all. Food and kerosene aplenty. It must have been the most wonderful sight to see him come home with his arms loaded with all of the things that they had been going without for all of those cold, hungry months.

Everything in Laura’s descriptions just sounds happier. Their first meal after Pa brought the groceries –”At suppertime the light shone through the clear glass onto the red-checked tablecloth and the white biscuits, the warmed up potatoes, and the platter of fried salt pork.” A simple meal, but in an entirely different environment.

It was truly going to be a Christmas celebration. They were all in the Christmas spirit as they spent the day preparing the feast that would take place the following day. It’s all about the food! Bread was rising, real bread. Dried apples and raisins to make pies. The cranberries were stewed until they were a mass of crimson jelly.

“It seems strange to have everything one could want to work with,” said Ma. And so she made a cake.

At the end of the day there was white bread, a cake, three pies and jellied cranberries. It must have been so difficult not to dig in! After Laura and Mary lightly argue (that same old argument) about the stuffing and how impatient they are to eat all of this good food, Ma tells them that they will have light bread and cranberry sauce for dinner. What seems like a insubstantial meal to many of us was a feast to the Ingalls family!

The next day could not come soon enough. As they prepared the turkey, Laura describes how the prairie smelled of springtime, how the doors were open and they could use both rooms once again. It gave her a spacious and rested feeling. All was right. Oh! How wonderful that turkey must have smelled!

The Boasts arrive. “For the last mile, I’ve been following my nose to that turkey!” Mr. Boast declared. After one of my many subsequent readings of this book, I wondered how many other folks in town wish they had been invited to the Ingalls’ for Christmas in May. Mrs. Boast is thin and had lost the lovely rosy color from her cheeks, but she is the same darling Mrs. Boast. It makes one wonder how they had survived the winter out on their claim shanty, even though they were much better off than most.

As Laura and Ma finish dinner preparations, Laura finds a mysterious package. Butter! The Boasts have brought butter. Their dinner is complete.

“Lord, we thank Thee for all Thy bounty.” That was all Pa said, but it seemed to say everything.

And they feast! Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberries, and bread and butter! The plates are filled, and then filled again. Then the pies and the cake are brought out. Everyone talks of the winter that they will try to put behind them and of the summer quickly approaching. They finally leave the table (and the clearing until later) and go sit by the sunny window. Sunny!

Then comes the moment that is a perfect close to this chapter, and this book:

Pa stretched his arms above his head. He opened and closed his hands and stretched his fingers wide, then ran them through his hair till it all stood on end.

“I believe this warm weather has taken the stiffness out of my fingers,” he said. “If you will bring me the fiddle, Laura, I’ll see what I can do.”

And Pa plays his fiddle once again.

And as they sang, the fear and the suffering of the long winter seemed to rise like a dark cloud and float away on the music. Spring had come. The sun was shining warm, the winds were soft, and the green grass was growing.

(Pa plays and they all sing — Where There’s a Will There’s a Way – Harry Clifton 1867. I love the lyrics.)

It’s ready.

Here’s the trailer.

Flooding in Yankton, South Dakota, Spring 1881

Spring is here! Those of us who live on the Plains know the sense of relief all too well, how feeling mild temperatures and seeing green growth lifts the spirits. Warm weather arrived abruptly in mid-April after the last snow. Yet the town still waits for the trains, as manpower combines with nature to clear the snow and ice from the tracks. The snow has compacted, melted and refrozen, into a glacial pack that would take weeks to melt if left undisturbed.

Flooding in Mankato, Minnesota, 1881

To make matters worse, all of that melting snow has to go somewhere –- again, something well known by those of us in the Plains and upper Midwest this year – and the fields and roads are flooded. In fact, the flooding following the Hard Winter of 1880-81 was as historic as the winter itself, with many towns along the larger rivers like the Missouri, Red, and even the Mississippi experiencing record floods due to both ice jams and snow melt. Many of the record crests from 1881 still stand today, and many towns along these rivers suffered extensive damage; in fact, several towns either moved their sites or were wiped out altogether. But I digress! Here in DeSmet, the main impact of the flooding is to prevent transportation of supplies over land, emphasizing their reliance of the stalled rail system.

Flooding in Omaha, Nebraska, 1881

The winter has been hard on not only the health of the Ingalls family, but also their shelter, as the tar paper on the claim shanty has been shredded. Like so many other aspects of DeSmet life, repairs are stalled until the train can arrive with building supplies. To aid in clearing the way for the trains, Pa and other men in the area have been working to clear a smaller cut in between them and the still-stalled work train. He works until he shakes. Meanwhile, the family ekes out its meals from the last of the seed wheat. Supplies run low enough to scare Carrie into wondering if the family will be forced to eat newly sprouted grass to survive. (Perhaps her malnourished body is craving vegetables?)

Pa’s joke with Carrie about the grass has always intrigued me, standing out a bit from the rest of the dialogue. Nebuchadnezzar? When I read the book for the first time, sometime around age 9 or 10, I had to look that up… both the pronunciation and the meaning behind the allusion. I wonder if Pa is referring to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, that Carrie won’t have to eat her way through the sprouting plant life. But Pa makes the joke with Carrie as a mere 10-year-old herself, and apparently, she gets it without having to look it up. It’s interesting what kids had learned at earlier ages back in the day. *

The morning of April 30 has a Christmas-like feel for the family, as the girls scramble to get ready (“Wait up, Laura, I can’t find my stockings!”) and Laura sings her way down the stairs. But they’ve all forgotten about the Superintendent’s stuck train, and it is this and not a freight train that passes through. Mr. Woodworth, the depot manager, breaks into the train to ration whatever goods he can find in the train, likely with the aid of several men who were expecting to supply their families that day. Pa bends his moral code to take some of the supplies home to his family, knowing they ate the very last of the seed wheat just that morning. It’s not enough to resupply the town, but it is enough to fortify the family supplies and break the wheat bread diet. Ma protests, but only mildly before she sets out to cook a proper meal for her family.

*Editor’s note: The “No, Nebuchadnezzar!” joke is in reference to the story of King Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar was proud and believed he was a great ruler all on his own, and although warned to repent, he did not, and as a result, was punished by going mad for seven years, during which time he actually ate grass!! When the seven years was up, his sanity was restored and after that he gave God the credit for making him a great ruler. So Pa was teasing Carrie by calling her Nebuchadnezzar for suggesting they eat grass, like he did. It’s a relatively minor story so it’s not surprising that many would not get the joke unless very familiar with Old Testament history, but as a Christian school kid, I knew it even as a child and got the joke then, so it’s reasonable to me that the Ingalls girls, having been raised with an emphasis on Bible reading, study, and memorization, would also have understood the reference, even at Carrie’s age of 10. ~Rebecca Brammer

Meanwhile, back in De Smet…

Laura and Mary are taking a breather in the crisp outdoors only to learn that they distrust the sun.  Even the promise of codfish gravy can’t stop the bickering and sense of hopelessness … which is exacerbated by fears about the seed wheat, Almanzo and Cap, and the potential for another storm.

Sure enough, the wind starts to howl once more, and we’re treated to what I consider to be one of the book’s most memorable passages …Pa shaking his fist at the elements and daring the wind to howl, to beat them, to blow them down.  It is terrible to remember that Pa can’t play the fiddle anymore; his hands have been so stiffened by the bitter cold and unrelenting work that it’s just not going to happen.

This time, Laura’s the one to help them gather up their resolve.  She begins to sing “Song of the Freed Men” (only to be corrected by Pa and told to sing in B flat — did the Ingalls family have perfect pitch or is this just a sign of the more music-educated times?).

After taunting the storm with their singing, it’s time for bed.  Laura and Mary wonder if it’s okay to pray for Cap and Almanzo.  Mary prays for their redemption if it’s God’s will, to which Laura replies, “I think it ought to be.  They were doing their best.”  (Summary of the book’s theme, much?)

Four days later, the blizzard is still raging…and the last of the seed wheat has been placed in the coffee mill to grind.  They can only wait and hope (though Pa knows about Almanzo’s stored seed wheat).  Sure enough, the storm subsides and they look out the peepholes they’ve scratched out of the frost-covered windows, waiting for word on their fate.

In which our hero and his brave sidekick set out in search of lifesaving wheat…

The chapter opens: “In the third night of that storm a stillness woke Almanzo.” There is then a rather touching discussion of how difficult it is to get out of bed and face the day in the cold (and in the 19th century — no heat, no electricity, no indoor plumbing!) and without his father to “rout” him out of bed. We also read that Almanzo is one of those annoying people who loves the early morning (sorry, editorializing there!). You get the sense that he’s been going to bed at night just waiting for the storm to break.

Cap Garland was waiting, too, as without the convenience of a phone to call each other, they manage to meet up on their sleds on Main Street. Could Cap Garland possibly have a more dashing name? No wonder Laura had a crush on him, he seems like he was very crush-inspiring — funny, brave, polite, handsome, tough — and he’d probably make a lot of men today look like total wimps. (Laura spells out how Almanzo felt, too: “He liked Cap Garland.”)

They head out toward the slough, but there was “no trace of a road.” No sign of any living thing. Almanzo optimistically thinks, “We’ll have to make it by guess and by golly!” You sense he has the same optimistic streak that Laura’s Pa has in him. But almost immediately it happens: “With no warning, Prince went down.” The horrific breaking through the snow and plunging down into the slough grass that had so hindered Pa earlier is once again slowing down the other male heroes of our story. After freeing Prince, they exchange ironic banter: “Nothing much to it,” says Almanzo; “Fine day for a trip,” returns Cap.

We are then reminded somewhat shockingly that both men are only NINETEEN YEARS OLD. Almanzo seems older because he has a homestead claim, but that is only because he lied about his age. (“. . .Cap treated Almanzo with respect. Almanzo made no objection to that.”) I know, of course, that in those days people assumed the duties of adulthood much earlier, but to realize these young men are the same age as the college “kids” I am surrounded by each day at work — well, it’s certainly food for thought.

As they get colder, they alternate riding on the sleds with running along beside the trotting horses to keep their blood moving. They have some more lighthearted banter and I think it’s really some of the neatest dialogue in the book. I’m amazed by the mental toughness they display throughout this chapter. After a couple more stumbles into the snow, they see the Lone Cottonwood, one of the only landmarks still visible on the snow-covered prairie. It would be the last one.

We’re reminded of the utter blankness and lifelessness of the cold, snow-covered prairie. We’re reminded that this could be a fool’s errand with deadly consequences — there could be no man, no wheat, no reason for venturing out — and no salvation for the town. Almanzo considers turning around after he estimates they’ve gone about 20 miles, but, “He did not want to go back to the hungry town and say that he had turned back with an empty sled.” After more reconnaissance, trotting, and some fears of frostbite, Almanzo spots “a smear of gray-brown in the snow.” Smoke. From a fire.

“Shadows were beginning to creep eastward” by the time they near the source of the fire. Which means if they left around 3 am it’s now past 12 noon — so they’ll have at minimum a 9-hour journey home, but they will be encumbered by the wheat (if they get it) and the horses will be tired. And dark will be coming.

A door opens and an “astonished” man stands there with long hair and an unkempt beard. (He must have smelled pretty ripe, too, but I’m guessing they all did at this point in history and also during this winter.) He excitedly greets them; he has been alone since last October. Anderson’s his name. His sod house is warm (albeit dark) and after they care for the horses they all sit down to eat “boiled beans, sourdough biscuit and dried-apple sauce.” They spotted Anderson’s wheat when they watered and fed the horses, so after eating, the negotiations begin.

When told women and children are near starving in town, Anderson responds: “That’s not my lookout… nobody’s responsible for other folks that haven’t got enough forethought to take care of themselves.” Almanzo responds that no one is asking for a handout; they want to pay for the wheat. Cap then tries his charm on the reluctant Anderson. (Anyone else wonder if it occurred to them that they could beat him unconscious and steal his wheat if needed? Would they have done this if it meant it was the only way to save the town? Did this ever occur to Anderson?)

When Almanzo whips out a wad of cash and offers $1.25 a bushel, Anderson folds and takes the deal. (Thank goodness!) With relief (and urgency) they get up and get the wheat loaded. They even thought to bring empty sacks to carry it in. As tempting as it is to stay, they want to get back. The threat of blizzards hangs over them, and nightfall.

So, they set out. Soon, Cap’s poor horse falls through the snow, and screams as he does so (how awful this must have been). They have no trail to follow and the horses are tired. They are tired. It’s getting late, and it’s getting colder. You can sense the fear that is kept locked down tight, for they cannot acknowledge it. The horses fall through the snow, and fall again. They trudge on, showing signs of frostbite now, and when they finally see the Lone Cottonwood in this treeless land, it is far away to the northeast, and a blizzard cloud lies in the northwest.

When both teams tumble down together into the snowy slough grass, and the darkness of night has set in, and the blizzard cloud slowly blots out the stars, we feel despair for Cap, for Almanzo, for the horses, and for the town. “We’re in for it, I guess,” said Cap. “We must be nearly there,” Almanzo answered. “They could see only a little way by the paleness of the snow and the faint starshine.”

And Laura Welser, we’re putting you down for Christmas in May.