rose wilder lane | Stray Thoughts

With the end of February, we come to the end of the Laura Ingalls Wilder reading Challenge for this year. If you’ve read anything by, about, or related to Laura this month, please share it with us in the comments. You can share a link back to your book reviews, or if you’ve written a wrap-up post, you can link back to that (the latter might be preferable if you’ve written more than one review — the WordPress spam filter tends to send comments with more than one link to the spam folder. But I’ll try to keep a watch out for them.) We’d also love to hear if you’ve done any “Little House” related activities.

And, if you’ve participated this month, you’re eligible for the drawing for a copy of The Little House Cookbook, compiled by Barbara M. Walker and illustrated by Garth Williams (the same illustrator for my set of Little House books). I’ll choose a name through random.org. a week from today to give everyone time to get their last books and posts finished. You’re eligible even if you don’t have a blog: just share with us in the comments what you read and a few of your thoughts about it. If you already have this book, I can substitute a similarly-priced Laura book of your choice. I’ve spent some time looking through it: it’s more than just recipes: it shares a lot of interesting information as well as excerpts about food and cooking from the books.

For myself, I had planned to make some items from it and have something of a birthday party for Laura on her birthday, the 7th, but that was when my mother-in-law was ill, and between that, moving her to a new place, and my husband’s surgery, I didn’t do any “Laura” activities, but I did manage to get a few books read. These link back to my reviews:

West From Home by Laura Ingalls Wilder, a compilation of letters Laura wrote to Almanzo while visiting their daughter, Rose, and Rose’s husband, and the World’s Fair.

Let the Hurricane Roar by Rose Wilder Lane. Laura’s daughter wrote a fictionalized account of some of her grandparent’s experiences.

On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder, covers the same events as Let the Hurricane Roar plus a few more: a grasshopper plague, blizzards, attending school for the first time, meeting Nellie Oleson.

I had originally planned to read Farmer Boy, about Almanzo’s childhood, but when I discovered the Plum Creek book covered some of the same events as Rose’s book, I wanted to go ahead and read it while the other was fresh in my mind. Farmer Boy was the second book written of the Little House books, but it can really be read at any point. I do want to read it before Almanzo shows up in Laura’s story, though!

Thank you all for participating! That’s what makes this challenge so fun. I’ve already come across a book or two I hadn’t known of before that I want to read next time through some of your reviews. I’m looking forward to your thoughts on what you’ve read!

Let the Hurricane Roar by Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, is also published as Young Pioneers. In some versions the characters are named Molly and David: in others they are Charles and Caroline. The events are based on the same events covered in Laura’s book On the Banks of Plum Creek, though some details have been changed.

I had wondered about the title, since hurricanes don’t generally come to the prairie, but the title comes from a hymn.

Molly and David are very young newlyweds (16 and 18) who head west to claim a homestead. Though they live in a little sod house and don’t have many possessions, they are gloriously happy, especially when a good wheat crop grows and they have a baby son. But disaster strikes in the form of a grasshopper plague that destroys the crop. David had borrowed against the lost crop, so he must travel to look for work. Even though neighbors give up and leave in the face of similar difficulties, Molly stays on through a terrible winter so claim jumpers won’t steal their land.

A former pastor used to bestow high compliments on people when he called them “pioneer stock” — sturdy, dependable, strong, not easily swayed. David and Molly would both qualify for this compliment. I am sure I would not! At least not when it comes to living in a dirt house all alone through several blizzards. The book realistically portrays Molly struggle with being alone, wrestling with all of the “what ifs,” and David’s anger over his failure, poor choices (going into debt), and difficult circumstances, rather than portraying them as always smiling and unflappable.

Some of that “pioneer stock” is shown as well in Molly’s attitude when a neighbor complains about hardships, and Molly thinks to herself, “Well, the land isn’t going to feed you with a spoon!” Quite different from the attitude of many today.

I also liked the description at the beginning that Molly “never quite lost the wonder that she, quiet and shy and not very pretty, had won such a man as David. He was laughing and bold [and] daring.”

It’s obvious Rose loved and admired her grandparents, and I am glad she shared this part of their story with us. Part of her goal in writing it was to “inspire Depression-era readers with its themes of resilience in the face of hardship and the strength of the American character” (The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure, p. 168).

Carrie and Amy both reviewed this book last year — in fact, Carrie’s review is where I think I first heard of it. They both focus more on the relationship between Molly and David than I did, but after rereading their reviews as I came to the end of mine, I do remember that that’s part of what drew me to this book, besides its relationship to Laura. Though the book is not written as a romance per se, and as Amy said, Rose writes with restraint, the realities as true love as opposed to “romance novel fiction” shine through it.

The only blight on this novel is that Rose used this information from her mother’s material without her mother’s knowledge or permission. Laura was understandably upset, and they eventually came to terms with it and moved on.

I was originally going to read Farmer Boy next for the Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge, but since it is Almanzo’s childhood story and doesn’t need to be read in order, I think I am going to read On the Banks of Plum Creek for Laura’s version of the events in this story while this book is still fresh in my mind.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)