• Prairie Fires

  • The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
  • By: Caroline Fraser
  • Narrated by: Christina Moore
  • Length: 21 hrs and 26 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (1,166 ratings)

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Prairie Fires  By  cover art

Prairie Fires

By: Caroline Fraser
Narrated by: Christina Moore
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Publisher's summary

The first comprehensive historical biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the beloved author of the Little House on the Prairie book series

Millions of fans of Little House on the Prairie believe they know Laura Ingalls - the pioneer girl who survived blizzards and near-starvation on the Great Plains, and the woman who wrote the famous autobiographical books. But the true story of her life has never been fully told. Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser - the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House series - masterfully fills in the gaps in Wilder's biography, setting the record straight regarding charges of ghostwriting that have swirled around the books and uncovering the grown-up story behind the most influential childhood epic of pioneer life.

Set against nearly a century of epochal change, from the Homestead Act and the Indian Wars to the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, Wilder's dramatic life provides a unique perspective on American history and our national mythology of self-reliance. Offering fresh insight and new discoveries about Wilder's life and times, Prairie Fires is the definitive book about Wilder and her world.

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, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, and the London Review of Books, among other publications. She lives in New Mexico.

©2017 Caroline Fraser (P)2017 Recorded Books

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What listeners say about Prairie Fires

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Don’t read if you don’t want your fond memories...

…of the Little House on the Prairie books or the TV series from the ‘70s entirely ruined.

Because I had read A Wilder Rose (fictionalized version on Rose Wilder Lane’s life based on a fair amount of research, it seems), my fond memories were already trashed, so I thought I’d listen to nonfiction. Things just got worse. Laura Ingalls Wilder is not particularly likeable (though very industrious) and her daughter, Rose is a lying, delusional, wretch. She seems bi-polar, narcissistic, and/or had borderline personality disorder.

I didn’t really know that the Ingall’s and the Wilder’s lives were always one step shy of completely falling apart, how poor they were, the reckless/impulsive/bad decisions that “Pa” and then Almanzo made.

What I most appreciated was that his story was replaced into historical context. Had it not been, I’m not sure I could have gotten through 21 hours. It was fairly depressing, and really Rose Wilder Lane…ugh. Lots of quotations from her personal diaries and letters. Add to the above that she was cruel, a racist and anti-Semite, always trying to undermine her mother. It was just too much and overwhelmed Wilder's story.

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69 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

The only book I've ever returned

I have never returned a book in my entire life until this one. Authors invest so much of themselves in their work I have always looked for something positive to take away from every book. Needless to say, I've read some pretty bad stuff. I truly tried to get through this. The bottom line is that there is hours of content describing someone with a mental disorder. The author not only repeats reports Ms. Wilders daughters behavior patterns over and over and over again but is judgemental of her. It feels like being trapped in a stalled elevator with a terribly negative person who just will not shut up.

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67 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Spoiler Alert: Do Not Read If You Don’t Want Your Childhood Memories Destroyed

The narration for this book is some of the best I’ve listened to; the story itself was well organized and presented in a clear and entertaining fashion. That being said, the picture drawn of Laura Ingalls Wilder makes her all too human and much less sympathetic than she made herself out to be in her Little House novels. The other members of her family - especially her daughter - fare no better. The truth may set one free, but in this instance that freedom comes at the expense of a much beloved American myth.

It should be noted that Ms. Fraser does an excellent job weaving the geopolitical vagaries of Wilder’s lifetime with her personal ups and downs. I was struck by the similarities between today’s social dysfunction/division and that experienced by Americans 100 years ago. Different era, same issues. We appear doomed to eternally repeat the same discourse, the same socioeconomic battles.

Excellent read if you’re ready to put aside another childhood “truth”.

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59 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Wrong title

This book should be called "Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter was a horrible person." I did not purchase this book to get the incredibly detailed account of all of Wilder's' daughter's fundamentally wrong-headed choices in life, but that is what I got - hours of it. Moore's grating and complaining voice made it even worse.
Incredibly annoying and disappointing!

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47 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

great listen for adult Wilder fans.

This text can be broken into two parts. The 1st part talks about Laura's youth and where the series took some liberties. The 2nd part talks about her adult life going into her daughter rose's life discussing how the books came into being and what has happened since the family all passed away legally In terms of the rights to the books. It is an excellent listen and I was captivated with all of the behind the scenes information. it made me hope that someone would attempt a new little house series that is accurate to Laura's writings. a must-listen for all Wilder fans.

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20 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

The “real” story - like life, not always what it seems on the outside

As I have grown older, I have come to realize that the old saying “things are not always what they seem on the outside” is so true. I’ve seen couples who seem incredibly happy end up in divorce, and I’ve learned that a friend & colleague had been embezzling money for years. It’s called real life - full of surprises and disappointments but also much joy. No person is all good or all bad - we are all complicated and real.

To me, this book was like that. I liked to believe the illusion that the Little House stories are 100% real - filled with happiness, courage, goodwill & determination. But that is a fairytale of fiction told to children and sugarcoated so as to not expose them to too much “real” too soon. I realize that there was a reason why the stories stopped when Laura became an adult and certain pieces of Laura’s life were conveniently left out of her books. Those pieces showed heartbreak, sadness, extreme poverty, and in some cases things that I would not have not wanted to know as a child.

As an adult, they make Laura’s story more real. Pieces of this book were hard to read and left a bad taste in my mouth - some made me sad. But they are part of her life story (at least the life that was researched for this book). This book certainly has changed some of my thoughts about the Ingalls & Wilder families. But that’s okay. Regardless of the “less than admirable” parts of their lives, the Little House books gave me a love of books and history. That has formed the person that I am today. Some of my best friends have formed because of books, so without Laura Ingalls Wilder’s stories, I may not be blessed with those friendships today.

So cheers to Laura and her family - the good & bad. I’m glad I read this book. It was well written & researched, it put the events in Laura’s life in historical context & it made the Ingalls & Wilder families real.

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18 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

More about Rose than Laura

I bought this book because I thought it would be the most comprehensive history of Laura's life, since, you know, the publisher's summary calls it "the first comprehensive historical biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder." I wanted to know what her life story REALLY was, particularly all the things her books left out. This book doesn't do much more than summarize Laura's youth, and i didn't get much out of it that isn't in the Wikipedia article. Most of what we get about Laura's childhood in this book is told by summarizing her books or quoting from _Pioneer Girl_. Perhaps that's because there isn't much documentary evidence from those years--if so, I wish Fraser had spent a bit more time explaining--in a scholarly way--what we don't know, and how we know what we DO know.

But man, this book tells me everything I needed to know about Rose, and more. Wow, she sounds like she was a horrible person! And listening to it, you get the feeling that Fraser hates Rose so much that she relishes dredging up every unpleasant detail, kind of like how in 8th grade you couldn't wait to retell mean gossip about that girl you don't like. It didn't help that the narrator's voice struck me as high-pitched and smug.

Still, I wouldn't call this book a waste of a credit: I definitely learned some things I didn't know, although I wish the book were 5 hours shorter (at least). I should have read it in a hard copy so I could see the pictures and skip the boring parts.

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17 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Truthfully painful

A very in-depth work of the times and characters. I'm happy that I read these books to my children years ago. This tale of the real characters is painfull to hear but the thoroughness of the research including the times all of this took place, helped me to have a perspective that made it palatable for me. It's not pretty, just real. I'll stick to real any day.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

get this woman an editor!

This book was an exhaustive history of the American Midwest and it's settling by this family. The depth of detail however was kind of crazy. It suffered from too much detail. There are long passages she could have condensed without losing anything. Mentioning every letter or exchange between the mother and daughter is extremely tedious. The daughter really does sound bipolar. The political slant through the last half was very interesting in light of the current president and the movement to have less government in our lives.

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10 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Good read, heavy liberal slant by author

I enjoyed this book, but the author has a basis against conservatives. The author goes into long diatribes at times in the book especially at the end. She hates fracking, oil production, pipelines and large scale farming. It would be a better book if the author would have stuck to the story with out her basis.

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10 people found this helpful