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.com Review ----------- An Best Book of November 2017: ( //www..com/b/?node=17143709011 ) Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books are perhaps the best known and beloved American stories for children. Some of the books’ fame is thanks with their afterlife in Michael Landon’s long-running television series, which Caroline Fraser describes as “not so much an adaptation as a hyperbolic fantasy spin off.” But the question of verisimilitude doesn’t begin and end with television. Though Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane, her politically cranky journalist daughter, defended the books’ historical accuracy, 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 looks, too, at emotional truths: Wilder’s her, Charles Ingalls, whom she called Pa, is the hero of her recollections. But he dodged service in the Civil War, put his family in harm’s way, and tried to settle on land he knew belonged to the Osage. This image of Charles Ingalls, Fraser writes, “contains elements of moral ambiguity missing from the portrait his daughter would one day so lovingly polish.” 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 cled, 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 Book Review Read more ( javascript:void(0) ) Review ------ “An absorbing new biography [that] deserves re 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 brings to uncovering the details of a life that has been expertly veiled by myth.” ―The New York Times Book Review (front page) “Fraser's meticulous biography has particular urgency today, as she unknots the threads of fact and fiction, of reality and myth, of mother and daughter.... Prairie Fires is not only a work of rigorous scholarship, but it also portrays Wilder, and her daughter Rose, in ways that illuminate our society’s current crises and rifts.” ―The New York Review of Books “Important and meticulous biography... Complex and astonishing... A subtle, intelligent and quietly explosive study.” ―Financial Times “The definitive biography... Magisterial and eloquent... A rich, provocative portrait.” ―Minneapolis Star Tribune “Magnificent... A remarkable, noteworthy biography of an American literary icon. It will captivate Little House fans as well as anyone looking to understand ‘the perpetual hard winter’ of life in frontier times.” ―USA Today “Impressive... Prairie Fires could not have been published at a more propitious time in our national life.” ―The New Republic “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 inful book is its delineation of the fraught relationship between Wilder and her deeply disturbed, often suicidal daughter.” ―Booklist (starred review) “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 “Meticulously researched, feelingly told, Prairie Fires is the definitive biography of a major writer who did so much to mold public perceptions of the Western frontier. Once again, Caroline Fraser has shown that she is a master of the careful art of sifting a life, finding meaning in the large and small events that shaped an iconic American figure. Prairie Fires is a magnificent contribution to the literature of the West.” ―Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West “At last, an unsentimental examination of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s real life on the frontier. Caroline Fraser rescues Wilder from frontier myth and gives us the gritty, passionate woman who endured the harshest experiences of homesteading, loved the Great Plains, and was devastated by their ultimate ruin and loss. Elegantly written and impeccably researched, Prairie Fires is a major contribution to environmental history and literary biography.” ―Linda Lear, author of Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature and Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature “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, author of A Jury of Her Peers and The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe “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. She also helpfully puts Wilder’s narrow world into larger historical context.” ―Publishers Weekly Read more ( javascript:void(0) ) See all Editorial Reviews ( /dp/product-description/1627792767/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&isInIframe=0 )