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, New Yorker, Atlantic, Los Angeles Times and London Review of Books, among other publications. She lives in New Mexico.
[This new biography is] just as gripping as the original novels . .
. As pacy and vivid as one of Wilder's own narratives, this
surprising biography is immensely revealing both about Wilder and
about America's founding myths
*Sunday Times*
Fraser's gripping account is much more than a biography. Hugely
recommended, even if you haven't read Wilder
*Sunday Times, Books of the Year*
A fascinating tale, which spans an extraordinary period of American
history . . . Whether you're a Wilder fan or have never picked up
one of her books, this is compelling stuff - and as a history of
the American dream, it's hard to beat
*Telegraph*
The sweep of the story is magnificent
*The Times*
Memories can be both "treasures" and "consuming fires of torment",
as Laura Ingalls Wilder knew. Caroline Fraser's rigorously
researched biography shows how the author's life was so much more
painful than it appears in her writings. Having combed through
manuscripts, letters and other documents, Fraser has gained insight
into the history that shaped her, including the dust bowl and the
great depression. She explores the dreams that sustained the writer
- and gets to the heart of a pioneer spirit. Here is an atmospheric
portrait of places as much as of a person, too: the log cabin in
which Wilder was born, the Great Plains, the dense forests and, of
course, the prairies
*Observer*
Tells a story that is far more intriguing than the myth
*Oldie*
Caroline Fraser's expert account of both Laura and her troubled
daughter Rose Wilder Lane, who is widely thought to have
over-influenced her mother's oeuvre, minutely dissects their
related lives and careers to explain and illustrate modern
America's inviolate founding myth . . . should stand as the last
word on a long life...Her story is everything you never knew and,
now more than ever, need to understand about a defining element of
the national character and the great American dream
*Country Life*
An absorbing new biography [that] deserves recognition as an
essential text.... For anyone who has drifted into thinking of
Wilder's 'Little House' books as relics of a distant and irrelevant
past, reading Prairie Fires will provide a lasting cure....
Meanwhile, 'Little House' devotees will appreciate the
extraordinary care and energy Fraser devotes to uncovering the
details of a life that has been expertly veiled by myth
*New York Times Book Review*
The definitive biography...Magisterial and eloquent...A rich,
provocative portrait
*Star Tribune*
Fraser's meticulous, smart, historically informed biography shows
where the books hew to - and diverge from - the facts of Wilder's
long and eventful life...Fraser got a head start on her work for
this biography when she edited the Library of America editions of
Laura Ingalls Wilder's writing. Even readers who have already
enjoyed those annotated volumes will find a trove of new material
in Prairie Fires, which puts the books in a richer, more
complicated context without undermining their value. Fraser
concludes, "They are not, as Wilder and her daughter had claimed,
true in every particular. Yet the truth about our history is in
them. ...Anyone who would ask where we came from and why, must
reckon with them
*Sarah Harrison Smith, the Amazon Book Review, An Amazon Best Book
of November 2017*
Unforgettable... A magisterial biography, which surely must be
called definitive. Richly documented (it contains 85 pages of
notes), it is a compelling, beautifully written story.... One of
the more interesting aspects of this wonderfully insightful book is
its delineation of the fraught relationship between Wilder and her
deeply disturbed, often suicidal daughter. But it is its marriage
of biography and history - the latter providing such a rich context
for the life - that is one of the great strengths of this
indispensable book
*Booklist, starred review*
Engrossing... Exhilarating... Lovers of the series will delight in
learning about real-life counterparts to classic fictional
episodes, but, as Fraser emphasizes, the true story was often much
harsher. Meticulously tracing the Ingalls and Wilder families'
experiences through public records and private documents, Fraser
discovers failed farm ventures and constant money problems, as well
as natural disasters even more terrifying and devastating in real
life than in Wilder's writing
*Publishers Weekly*
In the twenty-first century, the tense and secret authorial
partnership between Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose
Wilder Lane has emerged as the most complex and fascinating
psychological saga of mother-daughter collaboration in American
literary history. Caroline Fraser's deeply researched and
stimulating biography analyzes their controversial relationship and
places Wilder's influential fiction in the contexts of other myths
of pioneer women and the frontier
*Elaine Showalter*
A fantastic book. We've long understood the Little House series to
be a great American story, but Caroline Fraser brings it
unprecedented new context, as she masterfully chronicles the life
of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family alongside the complicated
history of our nation. Prairie Fires represents a significant
milestone in our understanding of Wilder's life, work, and
legacy
*Wendy McClure, author of The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the
Lost World of Little House on the Prairie*
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
