I wish I could remember who recommended that I read Prairie Fires so I could do a proper thanks. If you have ever loved the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder in any format from the books to the TV show that was based on them, you will want to read this account of how they came to be. It is not a usual publishing story. How many writers do entire drafts on the backs of envelopes, backs of other writings, and scraps of paper? If you are engaged with an ambivalent mother/daughter relationship, you will not want to miss this one. If you are intrigued by the mix of politics into the literary community, you will be absorbed by the book. If intensive research and accuracy woven into an engrossing story is important when you read nonfiction, Caroline Fraser will give you hours of satisfaction in Prairie Fires. (It is long.) The extent of the research is clear when the documentation starts at about the 65% point in the Kindle edition.
One theme of the book revolves around how much of Wilder’s work is nonfiction and how much she doctored the truth to make it more palatable. Another theme revolves around her daughter Rose Wilder Lane and how much her writing and editing were part of the books. For those who have a bit of knowledge of children’s literature, relationships between the Wilders and other editors and authors, like Berta Hader, Garth Williams, and Ursula Nordstrom, will give added interest. The book remains engaging all the way through Caroline Fraser’s account of the legacy that Laura Ingalls Wilder left scattered about, in her prairie recollections, in the extra tidbits in the endnotes, and in the final words of the acknowledgements, “Memories are our treasures and torments, as Wilder once said, and somehow it is only in books that it can all be set right in the end.”