Book Recommender

The Work that Launched the ‘Little House’ Series

The autobiographical manuscript that gave birth to the famous, family-friendly series of frontier adventure books

WRITTEN BY Deena C. Bouknight

“Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography” by Laura Ingalls Wilder, edited by Pamela Smith Hill (South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2014).

Few consider their circumstances or the era in which they live as distinct or significant until later-in-life reflection. This was the case for Laura Ingalls Wilder. Born in the Big Woods region of Wisconsin two years after the Civil War’s end, Wilder spent her childhood and adult life enduring every imaginable hardship and heartache in the frontier states of Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, and South Dakota. In the early 1900s, she settled in rural Missouri and, at 63 years old, wrote her autobiography.

However, even with the encouragement and connections provided by her daughter and acclaimed journalist and novelist, Rose Wilder Lane, Wilder could not land a publisher for “Pioneer Girl.” The chronicle details in storytelling style such occurrences as cattle drives across the great plains, Indians visiting her parents and four siblings, locusts wiping out crops, blizzards threatening survival, and much more. A few years later, in 1932, when Wilder turned 65, publishers became interested in the “Pioneer Girl” manuscript and spawned a series of children’s novels. Thus, eight books, starting with “Little House in the Big Woods” and ending with “These Happy Golden Years,” were published from 1932 until 1943, based on Wilder’s original autobiographical prose.

Wilder died at age 90 in 1957, but it was not until 2014 that South Dakota Historical Society Press decided to make “Pioneer Girl” available to the public—just as Wilder had intended when she first wrote it. The 472-pager is a weighty, coffee-table-size book dedicated “for generations of readers inspired by Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life and work.”

After a lengthy introduction by editor Pamela Smith Hill, Wilder’s words purely and simply capture America’s history. Wilder starts “Pioneer Girl” with “Once upon a time and years and years ago, Pa stopped the horses and the wagon they were hauling away out on the prairie in Indian Territory.” What follows is Wilder’s life laid out in pages rich with her remembrances. Added is historical photography, frontier maps, annotations based on primary sources, and even the famous Garth Williams illustrations that helped make the “Little House” series famous. •

Rivers of Time

‘Life on the Mississippi’ takes readers through American history by flatboat

WRITTEN BY Mark Lardas

‘‘Life on the Mississippi’’ by Rinker Buck (Avid Reader Press, 2022).

Rinker Buck is a newspaperman. His hobby is visiting the past. But since he lacks a time machine, he tries to relive past eras in the present. “Life on the Mississippi” documents his latest adventure. This time, he travels by flatboat down the Monongahela, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. Along the way, he learns about America in the late 18th, early 19th, and early 21st centuries. Rivermen rafted the route from the 1780s through the beginning of the Civil War. Although the steamboat began supplanting flatboats in the 1830s, flatboats remained important through the 1850s. Buck shows that settlers traveling trans-Appalachian America east of the Mississippi did not rely solely on Conestoga wagons. Settlers used flatboats to move west and built homes along the rivers and creeks of the Mississippi River basin. In 1782, Jacob Yoder launched his flatboat LEFT Lorem ipsumfrom the banks of Monongahela, upstream ABOVE Lorem ipsumof Pittsburgh, loaded with the harvest from his farm to sell in New Orleans. It proved so profitable that others imitated him, creating an industry and a culture.

Buck explores this experience. He has a flatboat built and then follows the route of the first flatboat trip to New Orleans. Buck’s boat, while not a faithful copy, is close enough. It has an engine and 21st-century technology; rivers are too crowded now to be navigated otherwise. Its crew is an eccentric collection close in spirit to the original river rats. Some work out well. Others prove problematic.

Buck is frequently warned of the dangers of the voyage. He describes the warnings given to his crew before and during their adventure in grisly detail, marked by the words: “You are all going to die.” These warnings prove overstated, yet the voyage is not for the faint-hearted. Three crew members break bones. Yet, it all proves worth the price. Buck makes friends along the way, sees parts of the country overlooked by many, and learns that the past and present form a seamless whole.

“Life on the Mississippi” is a fascinating mix of history and travelogue. Buck pays homage to Mark Twain’s “Life on the Mississippi” and Harland Hubbard’s “Shantyboat” (documenting a similar voyage in the 1940s). His adventures are his own, though. He shines a light on an important yet forgotten part of American history and shows its relevance to today’s America. •