Caroline Fraser's meticulously researched Prairie Fires took me back to the reading of my youth, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books. The project is immense, as Fraser takes on not only the life of Wilder, but her family history, that of her husband, and then their daughter, but also covers such sweeping territory as the Indian Wars, the New Deal, and the suffrage movement - essentially the entire landscape of Wilder's life.
The most engaging parts of the book are those that deal with Wilder herself, and particularly the ways in which her life, though the basis for the Little House books, actually differed from it. (I was most intrigued by the ways in which she chose to polish and preserve her parents for posterity.) Fraser fills in many blanks, and also allows readers to follow Wilder out of the prairies and into the Ozarks, where she spent the better part of six decades. (By the end of her life, Wilder had been a southerner much longer than she'd been a pioneer!)
More than anything, Prairie Fires brought home succinctly just how recent pioneer days were in the grand scheme of time. I found myself returning time and again to the fact that original pioneers/settlers were still alive when my parents were learning to walk. Granted, those still living had been riding in the wagon and not driving it, but all the same.
Fraser also presents food for thought with her examination of the psyche of Wilder and many like her: forced to depend on government "handouts" they resented the government all the more for it. Such perspectives bear consideration in today's time as much as they did in times past.
Prairie Fires starts rather slowly, and Fraser's work is sometimes a bit too deep in the weeds, particularly regarding the wanderings and politics of Wilder's only daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, but on the whole this is a worthy read for fans of Wilder who are interested in discovering the woman behind the myth.
Four stars.
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