Biography

Prairie Fires

Carolyn Fraser’s Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder won a Pulitzer in 2017. Little wonder. I’ve spent the past few weeks savoring it not just for its fascinating content, but for the thoroughness of its scholarship. Fraser, who edited the Library of America edition of the Little House books, has been studying Wilder for years, investigating everything from manuscripts to historic sites to land deeds to correspondence. She reflects on the whole sweep of historical and political contexts involved in the stories (which conclude in the latter 19th century), and in Wilder’s life (which lasted till 1957). Somehow, Fraser manages to weave it all together into a thoughtful discussion that deepens our understanding not only of Wilder, but of our history as a nation.

As an adult, my interest in Wilder was sparked by returning to the books when my daughters were young. I enjoyed the series as a child, but revisiting it as an adult triggered new observations and questions. (Some of my previous posts on the subject can be found here.) After some forays into Wilder biography, I think what stood out to me is the contrast between the warm security of the Ingalls family in the stories, and the desperate poverty that really characterized their lives. Coming away from Prairie Fires, I reflected on this again, along with other issues the book explores.

One thing that makes Prairie Fires stand out is its detailed research. In Fraser we have a guide who knows and loves the books, but who has also done an incredible amount of leg-work investigating their relationship to their period, to the facts of Wilder’s life, and to the creative process by which they emerged as literary works.

For instance, I learned a great deal from Fraser about how many of the natural disasters pioneers suffered were self-inflicted. Droughts, violent weather, dust storms and grasshoppers all were exacerbated by removing the prairie topsoil with its abundance of diverse grasses and microorganisms to plant crops like wheat (which requires more water than the prairie climate provided). Disaster and debt became common, but it took many years for policy to address the problems that had been created. During the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s, as Wilder was writing On the Banks of Plum Creek, she was experiencing a fresh wave of some of the same problems she had lived through decades earlier. The details Fraser gives brought this era into tragic focus for me in a new way.

Just last night, as I revisited the early pages of Little Town on the Prairie, I noticed how giddily the Ingalls family responded to Pa’s new plow that turned strips of the prairie sod upside down, creating tracts of bare earth and making it easier to plant. This is different than the garden described in Little House on the Prairie, in which the garden plants come up among the grasses. Doubtless the earlier method, though more physically taxing and less fitted to an industrial model of agriculture that depends on large plots of exposed soil and monocrops, would have resulted in far less heartbreak, debt and natural catastrophe.

The political and social contexts of the books are also explored at length. What farm policies were in effect when the railroad’s push to settle the west failed so badly? What options did Laura and Almanzo have in their disastrous “first four years” to help them dig out of crop failure, drought, sickness, and crippling debt? How did these policies change over the decades between the era described in the books, and the era in which they were written? Fraser explores the subject at length.

One can’t read the Little House books without noticing that they depict a range of attitudes about native Americans. Though Laura and Pa, two of our most reliable characters, are favorably disposed to the Indians, the Scotts (in Little House on the Prairie) as well as Ma (at the beginning of The Long Winter, for instance, as well as in other books) are completely racist. We learn much more about the troubled relationship between the U.S. government, the settlers, and the native Americans in Prairie Fires.

Finally, for any of us who are curious about the family relationships in Wilder world, the book provides an extended opportunity to puzzle over them. I appreciated Fraser’s perspective. Some biographers can be quite heavy-handed, and among Laura Ingalls Wilder’s biographers there are certainly a few of these. (I’m thinking of Holtz, author of The Ghost in the Little House, especially.) But Fraser acknowledges critical questions without making heavy-handed pronouncements.The relationship between Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter was obviously complicated and difficult, and we are given many of the seasons and details without being told what conclusions we should come to.

Unlike her mother, Rose Wilder Lane left a trove of journals and letters that reveal an extraordinarily troubled person, often deeply depressed and unable to maintain friendships. She also seemingly had no conscience (by her own admission), no ability to discern fact from fiction, which often got her into trouble when she produced “biographies” of famous people she had never met. To me it seems preposterous to think that Lane, whose literary mode and voice are strikingly different than her mother’s, should get the credit for the Little House books. She played a collaborative role in discussing and editing the books, but there is plenty of documentary evidence that they are her mother’s intellectual property.

I find it intriguing that Wilder insisted (as did Rose Wilder Lane) that everything in the books was “true,” even though there are obvious changes: events are depicted out of sequence, characters represent composites of real people, and experiences are left out. Why the insistence on documentary truth? It’s mystifying. Clearly Wilder was operating by a definition that left room for plenty of editorial latitude with experience. I suppose the overall impression is “true” to her experience, though even in that respect there is much heartbreak left out.

For instance, Wilder herself resisted detailing the darker chapters of Burr Oak, Iowa, Ma’s illness and Mary’s sinking into blindness at the start of Plum Creek because these events would destroy the emotional tone she was trying to create with the books. This was a conscious literary judgment. In other respects, Wilder insisted quite strongly on certain things NOT being edited so as to preserve the picture of the way things “really were.” The best example in Prairie Fires is when Laura insists (in a letter to Rose) that the matter-of-fact nature of the settlers’ survival in Long Winter was real, and did not make the townspeople unfeeling “monsters” as Rose speculated. Wilder compared the experience to Indian captivity narratives, in which captives stopped reacting to traumatizing events; unable to live at a fever pitch of emotion, they focused on survival. The very lack of emotion constituted emotional realism, she argued. All of this to say the the writer’s consciousness was very much alive in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s selection of what to include, what to leave out, and what tone and interpretation of events should dominate in the books. Why she insisted that every incident really happened is a puzzle indeed.

The relationships in the Ingalls family are treated gently but honestly in Prairie Fires. As an adult, it was hard not to notice that Pa, rather than the stoic Ma, is the emotional center of the stories. Though both parents are depicted as incredibly resourceful, intelligent people, honest and hard working, Fraser is not afraid to recognize Pa’s recklessness as well. He can build a homestead starting with nothing but a covered wagon and some tools; he can feed a family by hunting and supply necessities through trapping and trading; he can dig a well and turn back a prairie fire through a ditch and a back fire. But the overarching story remains one of instability. Its trajectory seems to reverse the rags to riches story; the family starts in a self-sufficient homestead in Wisconsin and ends up in a desolate wasteland. Fraser acknowledges this mixture of elements in the family, underscoring Laura’s determined effort to leave out the worst failings and cast her family, her father in particular, in the best possible light. And though Laura and Almanzo forged a strong and lasting marriage despite brutal obstacles — debt, illness, loss, poverty, physical disability — the stories, as Fraser points out, are largely a tale of loss: loss of the pristine beauty of the unsettled prairies, of the dream of a self-sufficient farm, and above all of family. The stories, which Wilder began writing in earnest at her father’s death, testify to how deeply she felt the loss of her family, and how fully she tried to write their way back together — even though after Pa’s passing, she never saw her mother or Mary again.

Prairie Fires is far better than I can do justice to, perhaps most of all because it furnishes a wealth of detail to nourish curiosity and stimulate thinking. We read literary biography because we are curious about authors, and literary criticism because it reinforces the multifaceted power books have in our lives. The best biographers give us the most comprehensive evidence to mull, acting as knowledgeable guides. Fraser does this beautifully, offering interpretive cues without being overpowering. I think the book succeeds so well because of two things: depth of research, and compassion. Fraser’s skill and patience in unearthing evidence is matched by a compassion that permits her to set Laura Ingalls Wilder before us without simplifying, condescending, idolizing, or villifying. If you’re looking for comprehensive reflection on a beloved author, consider Prairie Fires. It sets the bar high for any future biographies I’ll ever read.

2 Comments

  • JW

    Have you seen / read yet Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography? I am in the middle of it and it is FASCINATING! I recommend that you tackle that one next. Especially after reading this one you just reviewed. Now I am going to check out this one… :-) Thanks!

    • Janet

      Yes, I’ve read it! So interesting to see the “first draft” of what became the Little House books!