Prairie Fires - Caroline Fraser
Vložit
- čas přidán 12. 08. 2020
- Millions of readers of Little House on the Prairie believe they know Laura Ingalls-the pioneer girl who survived blizzards and near-starvation on the Great Plains, and the woman who wrote the famous autobiographical books. But the true saga of her life has never been fully told. Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser-the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House series-masterfully fills in the gaps in Wilder’s biography. Revealing the grown-up story behind the most influential childhood epic of pioneer life, she also chronicles Wilder's tumultuous relationship with her journalist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, setting the record straight regarding charges of ghostwriting that have swirled around the books.
The Little House books, for all the hardships they describe, are paeans to the pioneer spirit, portraying it as triumphant against all odds. But Wilder’s real life was harder and grittier than that, a story of relentless struggle, rootlessness, and poverty. It was only in her sixties, after losing nearly everything in the Great Depression, that she turned to children’s books, recasting her hardscrabble childhood as a celebratory vision of homesteading-and achieving fame and fortune in the process, in one of the most astonishing rags-to-riches episodes in American letters.
Spanning nearly a century of epochal change, from the Indian Wars to the Dust Bowl, Wilder’s dramatic life provides a unique perspective on American history and our national mythology of self-reliance. With fresh insights and new discoveries, Prairie Fires reveals the complex woman whose classic stories grip us to this day.
Caroline Fraser is the editor of the Library of America edition of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, and the author of Rewilding the World and God’s Perfect Child. Her writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, and the London Review of Books, among other publications.
Very good documentary
We will be reading this in our homeschool this year. Great presentation 🫶
Amazing interview. I am 2/3 of the way through the book Prairie Fires & savoring every word. . Please send a copy to the Hoover Library to be preserved. The interview is a must watch for any LIW fan.
I find I'm learning more and more and more about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family. I am very much very very very much I can't express how very much I am enjoying getting to know her and her family even more through the books that I had no idea were even out there. Do I love Laura Ingalls Wilder very much I have always felt kind of a connection with her sister Mary because she was born 100 years to the year that I was born before me I was born in 1965 and I was born with a problem with my optic nerve causing me to be legally blind from birth. I have always found it hard to read unless the book is in large print and so when I found the audio books read to me online I was amazed and I have enjoyed all of the books that I can find in audio book form.
When I was younger I received cassette tapes through my library and I just absolutely love love love reading. Especially things that are true and I also love family stories. I have always loved the Prairie stories!!!
It didn't take me long to realize how much the Little House on the Prairie series that I grew up watching is not completely the truth as in Michael Landon had put in his own stories, however, since reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books it has been fun to watch the series again and pick out where Michael Landon had the idea of certain stories that he added in the series.
I find myself telling my husband how this story line fell into place and how it really happened in the books LOL!!!
I have really enjoyed Little House on the Prairie in a whole new way in a whole new light in a whole new adventure!!!
Thank you for sharing, Amy!
I cannot wait to read this. Just accidentally discovered it.Very well done, indeed!
Excellent content and Excellent presentation style!
She talks as if Laura desires to hide some things, to the contrary, publishers didn’t think harsh stories belonged in children’s books
I think Laura was like her father and the other girls were like the mother. Until later tales of Rose about sister Grace..
Having your own land came from Abraham Lincoln who said (something to this order) life is having an acre of land of your own. Abraham Lincoln was also a lawyer for the Railroads. I am not sure Abraham Lincoln gave much thought to any thing he did.
Good thing you two didn’t live in Laura ‘s time, you’d die real quick
I'd like to think I knew enough from growing up in rural WV to survive.