With all the LauraPalooza hullaballoo this summer, we’ve been remiss in getting around to the THIRD Little House on the Prairie cast member autobiography to be published recently, following Melissa Gilbert’s Prairie Tale and Melissa Anderson’s The Way I See It. But by now you’re no doubt well aware of the existence of this latest book, Alison Arngrim’s Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, which came out in June and received an impressive amount of media attention, including appearances on The Today Show and FOX News. In other words, you probably don’t need us to tell you about the memoir by that lady who played Nellie Oleson.

But we will anyway, because Confessions of a Prairie Bitch is GREAT.

Saturday morning my phone rang and it was Beyond Little House contributor Sandra Hume calling to say she’d just finished reading it and loved it, too, so it seemed it was high time to post a review.

Like the LHOP cast memoirs before it, I first started reading Confessions with that tiny, tentative optimism that always accompanies a celebrity’s book effort: you hope at least that it won’t be awkward witnessing this famous person try to get the hang of the whole writing-a-book thing. Of the two previous books, for instance, I found myself quietly abandoning one of the Melissas while she went on and on about Season Three. Ah, well, these things happen.

With Confessions, though, there’s no need to manage expectations. Alison Arngrim is a natural storyteller, and an extremely funny one at that. Growing up at the Chateau Marmont with her teen idol brother, her mother who played the voice of Sweet Polly Purebread, and her father, Liberace’s manager, Arngrim had one of the freakiest Hollywood childhoods around, and she clearly delights in recounting the weirdness. Yet for all the hilarity she’s also able to write an understated but powerful account of her years of unreported abuse—a disturbing story that takes place long before her LHOP audition—and later, describe the loss of her close friend (and TV husband) Steve Tracy.

But the most remarkable strength of the book is what Arngrim has to share besides her personal misfortunes: from the start she makes it clear that being cast as Nellie Oleson saved her life. Not only did her screaming-tantrum performances give her an outlet for her anger, but she quickly found that playing a deeply-hated character on a popular television show required her to develop a thick skin and a stronger sense of self. (It took only one disastrous publicity appearance for Arngrim to realize that she could never wear her Nellie costume in public, because, she said, “It was simply too dangerous. It incited people.” You think she’s kidding? Read the book.)

No doubt some actors have to pretend that their most famous role is as important to them as it is to fans, but in Arngrim’s case, it’s the honest truth. Our world loves to constantly recycle the pop culture past and put old personalities on reality shows for no good reason, but Confessions will convince you that there’s really something to be learned from the return of Nellie Oleson—that bringing her back, sausage curls and all, isn’t just nostalgic but redemptive. My only complaint about the book is that it’s so squarely aimed at adult readers, because there’s plenty that teen girls can take away from Arngrim’s story.

Then again, it’s adults who really know the TV series, and Confessions of a Prairie Bitch handily delivers in that regard, too. If you thought you knew everything about the goings-on at LHOP’s Simi Valley set from the Melissas’ books, think again: you find out what Michael Landon wore (or, uh, didn’t wear) under his trousers, what it was like to film the infamous wheelchair-rolling-down the hill scene, and “what’s wrong with Baby Carrie” (and why she fell down in the opening credits).  In the hands of another writer all this might have seemed merely dishy, but Arngrim manages to make her unvarnished portrayal of the LHOP cast and crew an affectionate one. In the post-LHOP chapters she describes her developing activism and her decision to go public with her abuse story for the sake of The National Association to Protect Children, and gives a hilariously surreal account of her first visit to France, which has long hailed her as a cult icon. (When you read it you’ll forgive her for not being able to show up at LauraPalooza due to a scheduling conflict with a gig at a French monster truck rally. Yes, they have those there.)

I know, I’m going on and on. So should you read yet another LHOP actress bio?  Do you really want to climb that haystack again? In the case of Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, yes. Yes, you do.

Visit Wendy McClure at her website or the Facebook page for The Wilder Life.

A reader wrote in with a comment on this post (about Eliza Jane and Laura’s portrayal of her) that was so thorough and extensive I thought it deserved front-page notice.

I, too, have thought about this for many years, but here is my take on it. Every family has a difficult aunt or uncle or cousin or sibling. Some people are just difficult. Every family has someone you dread seeing at Thanksgiving and Christmas and pray you don’t get stuck next to them at the dinner table. It may not be that they are bad, or evil or even that you don’t respect them or trust them, they are just difficult.

Look at the history of both families. If I’m not mistaken, both are direct descendants of Mayflower Pilgrims. I don’t have time to page through all of Deb Houdek’s work on the geneaology right now, but I believe I remember seeing that some time ago. So you’ve got two families who descend from people who are willing to take on tremendous risk and hardship to live out what they believe. If Eliza Jane inherited that backbone, that would be something that would both make you respect and trust her highly, and something that would make you not want to sit next to her at Thanksgiving dinner.

Now take a look at Rose. Rose is famous for having had a highly successful career at a time when most women didn’t. She was a founder of the Libertarian movement and a friend of Ayn Rand. She is also notable for having divorced at a time when most women didn’t. This is another strong-willed, out-spoken woman cut from the same cloth as Eliza Jane. They were two of a kind. This is also a woman who built a house on her parents farm, for her parents, against their will. It was the very latest style in Connecticut, I’m sure, but it wasn’t their style. They lived in it for a while, then quietly moved back into their own house and abandoned it. Rose used it when she was home.

Lastly, take a look at Laura. She is hardly a shrinking violet herself. What kind of a woman would slap an Indian in the Dakota territories in the 1880’s? She’s lucky to have walked away from that alive, but I think perhaps the reason was first, that the Indians were so startled and second, that they recognized her fierce bravery and respected it. It is notable to that Almanzo and Laura competed with each other all their years in Missouri to see who could make the most money off their part of the farm, Laura with her chickens and eggs, Almanzo with the dairy cows. That is how Laura came to be a writer: by writing about her success as a farm wife in the Missouri Ruralist.

My take on it is that poor Almanzo, who was no coward himself but seems to have been a gentle soul, first was bossed around by his sister, then he married someone rather like his sister, and then he had a daughter perhaps even more out-spoken than his sister. The relationship between he and Laura seems to have been affectionate, based on her letters while she was visiting Rose in San Francisco, but I would imagine she could be a bit sharp when riled too. Understand that I’m saying this with a great deal of affection for Laura, but with an understanding too that she was human, and all humans have flaws. I would also note too that Laura had a fierce loyalty toward people she loved. This is most notable in that she fell for Cap Garland first (I’ve read this elsewhere, but you can also see it in the way she describes him), but when Almanzo came courting her and Cap courted Mary Power, she kept it to herself. Later, when Mary rejects Cap, Laura decides to stick with Almanzo anyway. She was too loyal to both Mary and Almanzo to risk hurting someone. But what I find rather sad was that when Rose was interviewing him late in life, he told her that his life had been mostly a disappointment to him. What a sad thing to say to your daughter. But he’d intended to be a prosperous and well respected farmer like his father, and weather, poor soil, bad economies, poor health and lack of sons had all been against him having any success.

I find it interesting to note that for three generations in Laura’s family, no boys survived early infancy. Her only brother died at five months, her only son died at three weeks and her only grandson, Rose’s son, died in infancy too. It makes me wonder if there was a lethal gene on the Y chromosome in that family. Ma had a brother, but that was the last male in the family to survive to adulthood. I guess we’ll never know, since the family died out.