Transcripts For CSPAN3 Laura Ingalls Wilder 20240711

My job tonight is to introduce the two people on the podium who will be conducting this conversation. She grew up in st. Louis and graduated from the university of missouri columbia with degrees in journalism and english literature. She cut short her time as a grad student to go to work in the mid 1980s. Jane henderson is the book editor at the st. Louis post after three years in the newsroom in connecticut, she returned to st. Louis and has been an editor and writer with the post dispatch features department for 30 years. She assigns and edits book reviews choosing from 300 or so new books each week. Tonight she will be having a conversation with caroline frazier. Caroline frazier is the editor of the library america edition of Laura Ingalls wilder, the little house books. Her latest book is prairie fires, the American Dreams of Laura Ingalls wilder. It was one of the New York Times ten best books of the year and won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for biography. The National Book critics circle award for biography and the bio internationals 2018 plutarch award. Carolyn frazier has traveled the country for the past two years giving talks on Laura Ingalls wilder, her daughter rose wilder lane and other topics to groups large and small at schools, mick libraries, conferences and universities. Formally on the staff of the new yorker, carolyn fraziers articles have appears in the new york review of books, the atlantic, the Los Angeles Times book review and the london review of books among other publications. She is also the author of gods perfect child, living and dying in the Christian Science church and dispatches from the conservation revolution. She was born in seattle, washington. In 1979, she graduated from Mercer Island high school. In 1987 she received her phd in english and American Literature from harvard. She lives with her husband in santa fe, new mexico. We would like you all to give her a very warm welcome tonight. [ applause ] i guess were on. Are you ready for us to go ahead . Are you going to talk . Thank you very much for having me and asking me to talk to carolyn frazier. Its really exciting. I think that probably most of us read little house on the prairie books when we were young and watched it on tv. I was getting to be a teenager at the time and sometimes was a little skeptical and thought it was a little corny. Well get back to that later. How long have you researched and studied and why did you start studying Laura Ingalls wilder . Well, i discovered the books as a kid too and read them and loved them and thought they were fantastic. I think part of the reason i really loved them was because my grandmother and most of my grand parents had been farmers in the midwest. They were all immigrants mainly from scandinavian places and came to minnesota and wisconsin and were farming in the late 1890s in some of the same places, same areas that Laura Ingalls had lived. So i think it was really fascinating to me to discover these books that told stories that cast some light on what they must have gone through. And then as an adult, i had an opportunity to review the first biography of rose wilder lane, Laura Ingalls wilders daughter, who was at one time a pretty well known journalist. And in the 90s, a biography of her appeared and it was quite a scandal, actually, because it claimed that she was really the author. That was william holts. He was from the university of missouri, right . Yeah. He taught at the university of missouri. It created quite a sensation. There were lots of headlines like little fraud on the prairie. Right, right, right. So i reviewed that book. Thats when i started looking at wilders manuscripts and kind of thinking about what an interesting story that was. Her life . Yes. I think you mention in your book that a lot of his assertions about rose writing the books actually is in the appendix, right . Did he set out, do you think, to debunk it, or did he just somehow fall into that later . Yeah. It was kind of an odd presentation in some ways because he seemed to have some real hostility towards laura as part of the story. I was very critical of her. Yet he didnt bring up this thing that was a central part of the book. His book was called the ghost in the little house until really the appendix when he talks about it a little bit at the end. So it was a contentious kind of argument to make. I ultimately came away from it feeling like there was a lot more to the story and that it was more complicated really. Than that. Than that. But when you earned your phd, im not sure how many people at harvard were studying Laura Ingalls wilder, were they . Ill tell you exactly how many. There were zero. And i didnt even think of it at that time. But i would never have proposed it because it was just not considered it wasnt considered academic, i would assume. Yeah. But you kind of have made it academic in a way with your book, because you do incorporate so much history into the story, right . Yeah. I mean, i later had the opportunity to edit a new version of the little house books, a new edition for the library of america. That entailed writing some notes on the text explaining what certain historical events were for the reader. As i was doing that, i began to realize, you know, this stuff is really interesting. Its really interesting to me. So i began to hope that it would be potentially interesting to readers as well. And so how long did you study or what papers did you dig up . Where did you find actual new information that hadnt been written about much before . Well, scholars were starting to do, you know, related work. I mean, theres a fascinating paper, for example, about the ingalls family in kansas that i found. And there was another paper in a folklore journal about a discussion of the origins of this phrase that occurs repeatedly in little house on the prairie, the scurrilous phrase, the only good indian is a dead indian. That was in use at the time. Because of an event that is also mentioned in the book called the minnesota massacre. So there was a whole history just about that one phrase that was so fascinating in terms of how that was used politically to justify the treatment of indians. So it seemed like a really rich history that really paid attention. Some of the papers are in the Herbert Hoover library too . Are those roses only, her papers . Both. Laura Ingalls Wilders papers are in the Herbert Hoover library . Yes. Its unusual, but the reason that came about was because when rose began her writing career and she really began as a yellow journalist she was writing these kind of questionable biographies of people. And she wrote one of Herbert Hoover. She was actually the first person to write a biography of hoover before he became president. And that was for adults . Yes. It wasnt for kids . Yes. But it was actually fictionalized. Right. Anyway, after her death, her papers ended up at the hoover president ial library as well as some of her mothers. Isnt that interesting. So what were some of the revelations that you found . I mean, obviously this book has won the Pulitzer Prize. People must have thought it was somewhat groundbreaking the way you pulled it together, all this information and how it related to history, i assume is why it won. I think it was a combination of establishing the importance of wilder and her work to both our literary history, but also our self image, the way that we see ourselves as the descendents of people who crossed the great plains and were involved in the settlement of the country. I think people are interested in the kind of fantasies that weve created about our own past and sort of looking at how true are those stories that we tell ourselves. Well, other people were telling that story, though, before wilder, werent they . Oh sure, but i think that her story has become one of the central ways that children absorb, especially white children, the ideas about manifest destiny, which thats a concept that has been interrogated quite a bit and yet even still today you hear politicians and other people kind of endorsing this idea that there was some grand plan for behind the whole idea of homesteading and so forth. Its been known that some of our president s and president ial candidates have been big fans of little house on the prairie. So was that a subtle message on their part, or was that just that thats what they were interested in . Well, i think youre speaking about ronald reagan, who famously there was this anecdote about how he used to watch little house on the prairie in the white house with nancy, because i think he knew Michael Landon, who of course was the star and producer and director of the tv show. They were friends and landon was a big reagan supporter. I doubt very much whether reagan himself had read the books or kind of had that sort of knowledge of the background of them. But yeah, i think there is maybe a little bit of a message in that, you know, that it was considered to be wholesome. Wholesome and hard working. I guess an also kind of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, right . Right. That whole notion of i mean, reagan famously said that, i mean, he obviously didnt support government. He said something famous about, you know, if somebody comes to you and says im here from the government and im here to help, you know youre supposed to be suspicious. Yes, that thats like the worst thing you can hear. So there is a kind of kernel in the books of this sort of slightly antigovernment. Well, i wasnt going to actually bring that up until a little later, but since were talking about it, i remember reading an essay in the new yorker a few years ago, Judith Thurman, who the person i was talking about the president ial candidate, Vice President ial candidate was sarah palin. It became associated with her. And Judith Thurman seemed to want to point out this idea that people are doing this all themselves and that Laura Ingalls wilder did it all herself wasnt entirely true, that she had had help, that the government had given or loaned them money to buy land, et cetera. I assume youve read that essay. Mmhm. How did you react to that and what is your interpretation of how much help or not from the government did the ingalls get . Yes. Its quite clear, actually, that laura herself had a really sort of contradictory reaction to the federal government because for a time in the 1920s she actually worked in a sense for the government. She was the secretary treasurer for the mansfield, missouri, federal farm loan program. So she helped farmers fill out paperwork and so forth to get these loans, which were beneficial for farmers. And she was very supportive of that program. But then when the new deal came along, she was very opposed to that. She was opposed to people taking assistance or aid from the government, as many people were, many farmers were. It wasnt an unusual attitude to have, was it . No. I remember my own mother, who was born in the 20s and was one of a family of ten. I said why dont you like fdr or something . She said, because he made us feel poor. Well, you were poor. During the depression with ten kids in the family, you were pretty poor. Apparently a lot of people didnt like either to feel that or to feel like they were being told that. I dont know. Yeah. Its kind of a baffling thing, because i think laura and certainly rose loved this idea of complete independence and autonomy and they felt that, you know, farmers and people should never take things from the government. That was shameful, i think, to them. And yet, you know, when you look at the history of the ingalls family, they did accept help. They accepted help, for example, for mary, lauras older sister, who became blind as a teenager as a result of an illness. And mary was ultimately sent to college in iowa, which was a state program that paid for that. So they were willing to accept aid. In fact, i think shes really the only member of the family that was able, you know, to go to college. So there was clearly flexibility in the original ingalls family. And for some reason i think that laura possibility because she was a little ashamed of some of her own reliance on her daughter financially developed a somewhat more rigid reaction. But when did she start writing or talking about that exactly . Was it more like in the 20s and 30s . It was really with the advent of fdr. You dont see laura talking about it before then. Tell us about Charles Ingalls. He took advantage of the homestead act, right . Mmhm. So what did that mean . I mean, how did that affect the family . Well, and of course the homestead act was one of the biggest government giveaways in history and the family was fine with that. He began you know, i mean, the homestead act is signed into law around 1862 by lincoln. And he takes advantage of it first in minnesota, although they dont really develop a homestead there. It really becomes a factor in their lives when they move onto the dakota territory, the town which the ingalls family did help found. I think it was from the beginning a real struggle for them, because it involved breaking land, you know, which cutting up the prairie with a breaking plough, which i think is fiendishly difficult work to cut through all the roots and tear off the grasses on the prairie. I think he really by this time, hes an older how old was he about . Id have to look, but i think he was probably by that time in his, you know, late 30s, 40. And hed probably been working yes. And hed be working like a dog all his life. Right. Yeah. I think it really took it out of him. They were able to, you know, have a few good crops and so forth, but he wasnt really supporting the family just with the homestead. He had to go into town and build houses. He actually worked mainly as a carpenter in his later years. So it kind of shows you how tough that was. I think it was easier for big families who had a lot of sons who could help out. And he didnt have any sons, right . Sadly they had a boy. Did he die . Yes. Lauras little brother freddie, who was born right after the locusts wiped them out in minnesota, and he died less than a year old. So there were no sons. Mary had her disability. So it was a really pretty tough life. Were they expected to pay back the government or prove the land, make sure that it was producing or something before they could really keep it . Yeah. The process of what they called proving up on the land took about five years. When you applied for a homestead, you filled out some paperwork and you paid a small fee, you know, a few bucks. I think it was 10 for a while and then it gradually went up. And you did have to clear a certain number of acres and you had to build something. You had to build some kind of house or shanty or sod house or something. You had to prove that that was on the land. And you had to at the end of this process, at the end of five years, you had to get some friends or neighbors to help you fill out the paperwork and testify to this. You know, you had to prove that you had done this. And that had to be published in the local newspaper. Thats why a lot of local newspapers were founded, was to publish that paperwork. Also probably to publish announcements perhaps even from the government and land sales. Sure. But to play devils advocate here, theyre not getting anything really for free from the government because theyre also doing the government a favor, arent they, by moving west and kind of helping clear out the indians and create a farm . Yeah. Although the utility of some of those farms is and was questionable because especially on the great plains, in the dakotas, a lot of that land was not ideal for farming, especially what they called dry land farming, which was just going alone without irrigation, just relying on whatever Mother Nature provided. So that land was marginal for farming. The government actually knew that when it participated in sending people out there or allowing the railroads to send people out there. Because the government scientists like John Wesley Powell had basically told them, look, this is better for grazing than it is for farming and you actually need a lot more of it to be successful. You need a lot more than the traditional 160 acres that the homestead act provided to make a go of it. But they did not pay any heed to that. So what was their motive in that, do you think . I believe the motive was to help the Railroad Companies pursue their profits. Oh really . Okay. So what about pa, though . I mean, we love pa, right . We do. Because he loves laura. Laura loves him. You know, we saw him on tv. But he sounds like he wasnt a very good, you know, provider. And laura knew that. You know, she admitted as much in a letter that she wrote to rose. She said Something Like, you know, pa was no farmer, he was no businessman, he was a poet and a musician. And i think she loved him for those qualities that were not that practical. She loved his charm and his he was very affectionate and loving father and he was, i think, a kind of very talented musician. I think his fiddle playing was something that made their lives worth living, you know, even during the darkest hours which were pretty dark of the family. And so, you know, she came away from her relationship with him, i think, valuing him as a father even though he had in a lot of ways failed as a provider. Right. Was that unusual or did he have like a very short Attention Span or something . I think it was just kind of restlessness in one way. He loved to kind of be moving on. He had an itchy foot, you know. He clearly disliked it when an area became too settled and overpopulated. He always wanted to keep going and moving onto the next place that was wilder. He loved to kind of wander by himself on these hunting forays. So i think it was just that he was not supremely dedicated to the domestic farming scene. Well, what about his poor wife . I mean, was she doing the lions share of the work at home . Poor carolyn. She sounds a little resigned. Well, i think in some ways she was, although that was the thing. Common, yeah. That was the lot of many women at the time to hold down the fort. So i think that she was a very patient, very accepting person in a lot of ways. It seems though that she did finally put her foot down when they got to dismat and said no further. I think she did that in part for the children that she wanted them to receive some kind of education. How much education did laura get . For the time, she got pretty good. I mean, she never actually graduated from what they called high school then, because she left to become a teacher herself. And i think she always felt a little badly about that. But she was quite well read for a person of her age. How did she get books . Did they have a library there . They never had a library while she was there. She would write later in life to School Children and talk about how wonderful it was now that kids had access to libraries. But they had a few books. You know, they really valued literature. I think Charles Ingalls for the son of farmers was a very literate man and he enjoyed reading and so did Caroline Ingalls. So i think reading at home was something they did all the time, reading aloud. He was a bit of a story teller too, wasnt he . Oh yes. And i think he would hear stories down at the hardware store. Hed sit around with his pals and get the news and love to read newspapers and was a great story teller. She always said that once he had heard a tune played on the fiddle, that he would always remember it and could reproduce it. So he must have had quite an ear. And how long would her parents live . When did he pass away . Well, laura and her husband and daughter ended up leaving dismat in 1894 to come to the ozarks in missouri after a number of misfortunes that they suffered. And that was actually the last time that laura would see her father until he was on his death bed in 1902. So about eight years . Yeah. So she did not she was not able to see him or be with him until the very end. He died, you know, in his i think he was 63 or Something Like that. Caroline ingalls lived on for some time in dismat. She and mary lived together and Caroline Ingalls died in 1924, i think and mary in 1928. Thats before laura made it big, right, before laura published her first book . Right, because laura doesnt really start writing the books until the 30s. She writes first an autobiography that was not published during her life around 1930. Pioneer girl is that it . Yes. Its recently been published by the south Dakota Historical society. Right. And its well annotated, as i remember. Yes. Its beautifully produced and annotated. They put a lot of Historical Information in that too, i think. Yes. But her other sisters, carrie and grace, they didnt end up as well as the wilder family, right . They still had some struggles to the end or yeah. You know, they were quite poor. Carrie was a kind of enterprising Young Journalist for a while. She worked for some newspapers and ended up marrying a miner in the keystone area. And grace got married to a fellow not far away from dismat in a little town called manchester. But they were very poor. And grace had some Health Problems all her life. Did laura ever give them money, do you think . Its unclear. I dont think she ever really helped support them. I do think in later years during the depression, she may have given them some clothes and other things. But i dont think that she really financially helped support them. How was lauras marriage to almonzo . Yes. They had a terrible time right after they got married, they were heavily in debt and lost all these crops. And then they fell ill with diphtheria which is a very serious illness at the time, no treatment for it. And he suffered a stroke while he was recovering from the diphtheria, which would last you know, the effects he was young when he had the stroke or relatively young. Yes. He was a young vital man and after the stroke he had difficulty walking really for the rest of his life. I mean, he could walk and he could work. He worked very hard, i think. But i think it was a real struggle physically for him and he couldnt do the kind of hard labor that hed done. So they came to missouri. I think that was something about apples. The land of the big red apples. That was how the railroad advertised the ozarks and especially the area where the wilders ended up moving around mansfield. Like all railroad comeons it was to some extent a bit of a fantasy. But there were orchards and so forth that were being established. That was actually one of the things they did with their property outside of mansfield, is to plant a lot of apple trees that were pretty successful for a while. I think a lot of that was wiped out during the dust bowl years, sadly. I mean, we dont think of the ozarks or at least i dont as great farmland either. I mean, its pretty rocky. It is. You talk to people there now and almost all of them have stories about rock picking that somebody would pay them 50 cents to go pick up rocks in their fields. So rocky ridge was the name of their farm. I dont think it was ever, you know, hugely i think they grew oats, they grew stuff for their livestock. They did have quite a lot of livestock at one point. She was really proud of her chickens. Yes. She was very skilled with poultry and developed all these ways to keep chickens productive and healthy. That was a huge boon to them. And one of the things that she began writing about for newspapers was poultry and how to be successful. She was very distressed that almonzo was kind of dismissive of the money she made off of poultry. So she sat down and added up all the money she was making and proved to him that it was worthwhile. Yeah. What paid the bills before she the book sold . What paid the bills mostly . Oh, they had all kinds of jobs. When they first went there, almanzo was helping deliver freight from the train depo. She worked for an oil company doing the books. And they took in borders. She had quite a little business doing that for a while. Then these various other things came along. She had the farm loan work. And at that same time she was also starting to write for newspapers. She wrote for the missouri ruralist, a very well known and well respected farm newspaper. Thats really where she kind of serves her apprenticeship as a writer and started writing about her family, her father, her sister mary. Oh she did, she wrote about them. Mmhm. And people always liked family stories in general, but how did she get that job, do you know . Yeah. Well, she and rose kind of came up together. You know, they had this famous trip laura took a trip in 1915 to visit her daughter rose who at that time was living in San Francisco. Shed married this kind of never do well guy in San Francisco. San francisco, of course, was a kind of hot bed of yellow journalism at the time. She started working on one of the womens pages of the San Francisco bulletin, wrote fiction and some nonfiction that actually was fiction. At the same time shes telling her mother, look, you can make so much more money writing for a newspaper than you can with chickens, you know. So stop doing that. Oh yeah, we know thats still the case. So that was how they got into it. Laura kind of apprenticed herself to her daughter for a while. Then she was on her way. And the ruralist gig was quite a lucky break for her, because they really valued her. You know, she was sort of their woman columnist for a long time. Do we know how much she was paid for those . I dont think we do. Do you want to talk more about rose . Because rose is a character and, you know, she contributes quite a bit in the book, but she also sounds a little unsteady to me, a little moody at the very least. Yeah. Yeah, rose had a hard life in some ways. You know, from a young child she had a lot of trauma in her life because of all those things that happened, her parents illness and her fathers disability. They lost another child that she didnt even remember for a long time. And the house burned down, the home that he had built for his wife. So i think a lot of that left her with, you know, all this sort of confused feelings of responsibility. So as an adult, you can kind of see all this trauma playing out in her life and she certainly did get severely depressed at various periods and suicidal sometimes. So she did seem to suffer a lot. And her relationship with her mother was pretty rocky too. They had a lot of back and forth. Yeah. But they must have also sort of supported each other, because she sent didnt she help send her mothers first manuscript to a publisher and sort of coached her through what to do . Oh yeah. I often say that i dont think we would have the little house books if it werent for rose, because rose had a lot of experience as a writer. She had a lot of polish and professionalism. She knew publishing people. She knew a lot of editors in new york. She knew editors at magazines. So she was really kind of the driving force pushing her mother to take advantage of these memories that shed been hearing about these stories about the pioneering days all her life. And she knew that there was some money to be made off of that, you know, that there was a real market for that. And possibly, i dont know, the fact that the country was becoming more modern made people nostalgic or interested in those older stories, i assume. Definitely. You can really see that kicking in during the depression, that the stories in farmer boy were obviously really appealing to a public that doesnt know where their next meal is coming from. You know, these stories about wonderful farms and these amazing meals that they used to prepare, farmer boy is full of accounts of eating pie for breakfast. You know, it was just the kind of wonderful nostalgia for a time of plenty during a time when people were desperate. I mean, obviously these books took a little liberty with history, right . But so did the tv series, probably even more. And maybe not that we should look to tv series for our history lessons, but a lot of people watched that show. So they probably got a pretty good idea that this was sort of how it was. What were some of the things that it got wrong, do you think . The tv show . Mmhm. More or less everything. Really . I think that the tv show was so made up out of whole cloth, if you look at it now, it really was more about the 1970s than it was about the 1870s. And this was true of almost everything coming out of hollywood. Its not like that was unusual. Right. Westerns and so forth are notoriously fantasies of what life was supposed to be like. But yeah, i mean, the way that Charles Ingalls was portrayed for example by Michael Landon, i have a picture in my slide show of Michael Landon with his shirt off, you know, and his chest shaved. That wasnt pa, huh . That probably was not happening a lot on the prairie, im thinking. I could give you a million examples. They didnt wear sho to walk around, or go to town or go to school, right. Right. But Michael Landon didnt want them to have i think Michael Landon really did emphasize the success of the family. So his kids did wear shoes. Shoes, right. And they had toys that the you know, the real ingalls girls i think coveted and would have loved to have had but didnt have. But didnt, right. Well, so also in the i dont remember every detail of the tv series. But Laura Ingalls, how did it show the indians, and how did that compare to how the indians were portrayed in the books . I mean, laura theres some mixed sort of messages there, it seems. Yeah. I mean, im aware of just a handful of instances, especially one episode of the tv show, that showed what was meant to be an indian boy and lauras interaction with him. And i think that these were, again, just ideas of Michael Landon who apparently also repurposed a lot of bonanza episodes. Oh, did he . Yeah, so i dont really think it had anything to do with historical reality, or even with wilders own memories, you know, that come through so strongly in little house on the prairie, which she called her Indian Country novel, and which does portray a number of encounters with that she and her family had with indians in kansas. Which are, you know, today when we read them theyre problematic and theres a certain amount of racist language and attitudes on display in that novel. But its its not laura, necessarily, who shows those, is it . I mean, her mother is quite afraid of indians. Her mother is certainly. And a number of times when she uses this inflammatory language its given to another character. Its not something laura is saying, or her father is saying. In fact, her father disagrees with it vocally. But i think nonetheless there are attitudes and expressions of how people see and interpret indians and indian behavior that are that would never be published today. No. And so its interesting to look at that novel as an expression of that time. I think it remains one of her most important novels. But i do think you have to understand it in its historical context. Its time. Its really a page turner, i think, that book is. I mean, theres always stuff happening. Theres wolves, theres indians, theres, you know, just a lot of stuff. But, you know, as you know, the American Library association a couple years ago renamed what was the Laura Ingalls wilder award in part because of this concern over a portrait of the indians, right . How do you feel about that . Do you think that was necessary . I think it was necessary for them because thats what they decided to do. And i understand why they did it. They were the institution that developed the award. They owned it. They had the right to change the name of it. But they didnt withdraw it. They didnt withdraw it from wilder herself who was the first recipient of it and they made a very Public Statement saying that they hoped that children and adults would continue to read the books. So it wasnt intended as an act of censorship. Although i think the general public somehow interpreted it, at least in some quarters, as that, which i think is too bad because that wasnt the intent. But they still have a theodore guisele award. They do. Theodore guisele was more explicitly anti semitic, i think, than laura was in her novels. Right. Yes, he, in fact, published during the period of the Second World War a number of racist images. So its complicated. Yeah. I mean, they actually have, i think, a different set of problems with that award based on how it was set up. Oh, really . And their arrangement if the family. I dont know the full story behind that but i think there is some complications involved with that. But as far as wilder is concerned it had been something that they had been discussing for years. I know librarians had been concerned about it because there had been children in communities, in south dakota, and in other states in the plains and the west who had actually, you know, come home from school in tears, you know. Because because they had been reading little house on the prairie and had read these inflammatory things so i think it was a recognition that some of the books have become, you know, that their portrayal of indians is complex, and disturbing, and that that has to be acknowledged, that there has to be context provided for these books if theyre going to continue to be taught in schools. How does that compare to, say, other sort of classic childrens books though . I mean, are there i mean, wouldnt many of them, would every one of them pass the sort of test of being not oh, surely not, and there have been many instances of this, my mother was a Kindergarten Teacher and taught first grade and i remember i remember her distress when she had to stop reading little black sambo, you know, to kids and so this is something that has been happening and people reevaluate classics all the time and begin either withdrawing them from young children. I mean, i think that the issue is children, its particularly notable and disturbing when its children who are the audience for these works. Sing for adults its a totally different situation. You know, i mean, people are still reading and discussing Huckleberry Finn for example in literature courses. But those are adults. And so its a different set of standards, i think. Hopefully they have more knowledge to put things in context, i would assume. Sure. Would you have them maybe edit or change anything now in the little house books to make that go away . No. Im never a fan of and i dont think its necessary. I dont think it solves a problem. I think you just need to either reconsider whos reading the books, and what age they are when they read the books. And provide context. Or, you know i mean, im not an educator. Im not somebody who has those kinds of skills. But i just think its an issue with, you know, all of literature from previous periods. Which, by the way, i think when my children were young there was a new picture book that came out that was about was like little black sambo, it was the story, wasnt called that, of course, and had different illustrations that were more respectful and it was a darling little book. I read it to my daughter a lot. I cant remember what the name of it is now. But they they called him something slightly different. But i think it was based on that. Its just that it had been reillustrated so that it told the story more kind of respectfully. Anyway, so its probably about time for other people to think of some questions. There are microphones over here, and youll have to get up to go to them because they dont they dont roam around the room. So would anyone else like to ask Caroline Fraser a question . This is an easy one. Do you have a favorite novel by Laura Ingalls wilder . If so, which one and why . Okay, yes. Ive always really loved the long winter, which is her novel about the familys survival of this hellacious winter of 1880 to 1881. And it describes how the ingalls family was basically kind of trapped in their house in de smet for months at a time as the food dwindled and dwindled. You know, they were down to their last sack of potatoes, i think, when this young man named Almanzo Wilder with another fellow in town made a kind of desperate journey to get the seed wheat from a farmer outside of town and they risked their lives to go find that wheat and this, of course, actually all happened and its beautifully written. Its an extraordinary survival tale. And its just very evocative of the kind of terror, and numbness that overtakes you, you know, when youre subjected to these kinds of conditions. And then, of course, it all comes right in the end. You know, through this act of heroism by the man she eventually marries. So its a wonderful novel. And did were they happy for the rest of their lives, do you think . Oh, right, yes. I do think that they were. I mean, i think their marriage was difficult in the ways that many marriages are, you know, that they had sometimes real sort of power struggles, you know. I think laura was a really forceful person. She had she had a hot temper. She would often, you know, fly off the handle. I think she was quite quick to anger. I think she knew this about herself and sort of regretted it. But nonetheless. And yet he was very, you know, patient with her. He would say, i think, later in life that, you know, he knew that about her when he married her. And i think that he admired her kind of fire, her fiery personality. And i do think that they loved each other deeply. I dont think it was always easy though for them. Do you have a favorite little house site . Some people go on pilgrimages to different locations. Do you have a favorite . Yeah, you know, theres Something Wonderful at all of them. But one of my favorites is the plum creek site. The town of walnut grove is quite interesting in itself, and theres a lot there. But theres this area where the family dugout was right next to plum creek. And you can see still see the depression in the earth where the dugout must have collapsed at one point. And its such a lovely place. The owners of it have really kind of preserved the character of it. So you can kind of see the views that they must have seen, and take in a little bit of the character of the land. And its just a beautiful little spot. What do you think oh, go ahead. Would you talk a little bit about lauras relationship with her sister mary. Oh, sure. Yeah, i mean, that was a critical, you know, part of her life, i think, because they obviously the two sisters, mary and laura, had a real kind of competition. They were very competitive with each other. And mary tended to be you know, when they were younger kind of much more pious and proper and a little bit prim which was something that laura always resented. And i think this was true. I think this was a difference between them. And then when mary fell ill and nearly died, and then became blind, laura was then, you know, really kind of forced into this role that she had never contemplated for herself which was to become a teacher. That was what mary had been intending to do, and her parents had always hoped that mary would teach and be able to make a little money that way. And so it was this huge, i think, shock for laura that then she had to step into those shoes. And it showed her, she said, that, you know, she really could do something that she didnt want to do. She was never comfortable, you know, doing that so young and yet she did do it. She forced herself to do it and it was really hard. For her. To step up in front of kids who were bigger than she was, you know. She was a small person. Yes, she was i mean, wasnt she just under 50. She was just around 50. And so, you know, i think that relationship stayed with her really for the rest of her life, even though she and mary were separated for most of their adult lives. And i think that even the you know, some of those little childhood resentments stayed with her too. She would describe those with such feeling, you know, later in life, that it was clear that that remained a kind of i think it created her love of fairness and her intolerance of injustice. You know, she was very quick to be angry about things that she felt to be an injustice. I think that came from her competition with mary. Ive really enjoyed your talk so far. And i just had a couple questions. Ill do the one. I know you said you love the books. How did you get into researching like you did . I know most people, you read books, you love the books and you dont go as far as you have where you have researched these people for years. What led you into doing what youve done . To me, the historical background of the ingalls lives was really fascinating. And the more i got into that the more i wanted to find out. It was almost like putting together a puzzle or something. You know, there were all these kind of missing pieces that i wanted to find the answers to. And so i think that was a big part of it. I also, you know, you had mentioned earlier that, you know, nobody at harvard would have studied Something Like this. I did feel that there was an importance to these books, that they really deserved attention and explication and analysis in a way that they hadnt not that there arent lots of fans. There are lots of really dedicated fans and amateur historians and people who have studied the books. And they have contributed an enormous amount as well. So i want to give them credit. As well. But i really felt like it was a subject that the general public would respond to and that, you know, the attention would be repaid with new fans, hopefully. New interest. Because i think its fine to not be a fan of the little house books as well, there are lots of people who dont like them. Which i completely understand. And i think thats totally legitimate. But i do think theyre important. I think theyve helped shape our ideas about homesteading and about our history with farming and settlement that we need to know more about those things. Did you have another question . Ill go ahead and ask. I know somebody else is coming up. How does it make you feel knowing your book is as big as it is, how does it make an author feel knowing this book is like huge out there . Well, its enormously im just curious what authors think like that. Its enormously gratifying to get a response to your work because of course most writers and certainly i have, you know, spent a lot of years sitting by myself in a room, you know, not talking to anybody, just working. And so its wonderful to have readers and to meet readers and to hear their responses and their enthusiasm for the topic. Well, were you surprised when you won the pulitzer . I was shocked. Deeply, deeply shocked, yes, very surprised. Question . Yes. I read that Charles Ingalls lineage stopped with rose when she passed away. Did rose not have any children or grace or the other sister . No, carrie had a couple of her the man that she married had a couple of children before they married. But she had no children of her own. Mary had no children. Grace had no children. Rose, likewise, did not have any surviving children. Rose did have a kind of habit later in her life of sort of casually adopting, so adopted several young people in a kind of temporary way. And one of those people eventually became the inher fit of the estate, a fellow named Roger Mcbride who she met when he was the 14yearold son of her editor at readers digest, and he became her adopted grandson and inherited the estate when she died. Thank you. I have a comment and a question. And my favorite was always the long winter and my view is certainly colored now, having read about that lazy couple that lived with them during the long winter. The other thing, whenever i read those books well, i still do. I always wondered. I knew that laura was born right after the civil war and it was never mentioned, you know like charles never apparently fought in the war. And it seems to me from the book it just sort of was it when the draft came that he just sort of disappeared for a year . Is that kind of yeah, thats a very interesting period. And it remains, i think, an unanswered question, why he did not serve. There was some history there. I mean, the ingalls, charles and caroline married in 1860. She had a brother who died in the war. And it may have been, you know, just speculating here, but she might have discouraged his participation. But yes, they do kind of drop off the map briefly around that time. And then turn up in pepin, wisconsin. And that was an area where a lot of men were in wisconsin were kind of drifting off into the lumber camps and so forth in the northern part of the state to potentially avoid the draft, which was quite contentious subject in wisconsin although i think the state of wisconsin ended up sending more men to fight in the war than almost any other state. Really . So its you know, its tan tantalizing and interesting to think about what that might have been like. And why none of the ingalls boys, except the two youngest who ended up volunteering very late in the war, why none of them served. Its very interesting. Now, in mansfield, this Roger Mcbride, he kind of took over the royalties, or whatever, of some of the little house books, didnt he, and wasnt the Mansfield Public Library supposed to get them later but they never did . They got a lump settlement, i think. Right. Yeah, lauras will did leave the Wright County library, i think it was, the proceeds, the royalties. She left them all to rose for roses lifetime, but then once rose had died it was supposed to go to the library. And he engaged in some legal machinations to prevent that from happening. So after he died then there was a bit of a reckoning and a lawsuit was filed by the library and they did get a settlement for, you know, a fairly substantial sum. So yeah, it was a little a little shady. Yeah. Question . Im sorry, because im not american, but, you know little house on the prairie the tv series kept a benchmark in our country. I was a big fan. So when i was a teenager. Can i request something . Because i believe that the majority of people in here are a big fan of you. So can i take can you take a photograph at the end of this event . He wants your photograph. Well, she was going to sign, but theres no books to sign. Youre going to sign the no, id be happy to. Thank you. Thats very cute. Do we have any other questions . Because i could keep asking questions all night long, but i dont know, pam, heres someone. So you kind of mentioned this at the beginning about the possibility that this one author brought up that rose really was the author of the books. And i read the annotated bibliography. Took me forever, but i read it. And when you read that you can see where she sent things to rose and rose kept sending them back saying no, do this, do this. So it was it was more like rose was her editor than the author. So, you know, to me it will always be Laura Ingalls wilders books. Yeah, they definitely had a collaboration is what people often call it. I think it was you know, kind of mother, daughter, writer, editor collaboration. But rose contributed a lot. And more clearly edited more heavily than a standard editor in new york might have done at that time. So it is worth studying and talking about. And i dont think were done with that even today. And there are certain stages of the manuscripts that appear to be missing. So it really does show you a lot about their process when you look at what remains. I think that, though, that it is clear that laura did produce the raw material that became the books and rose brought a lot to it in the editing. Can you compare her writing and her farm columns to the writing in the novels, and tell, is there any substantial difference in the tone or the language she uses, or her style of writing . Yeah, there are some really interesting moments in the farm columns. And also in the speech that she delivered about her work, which was entirely hers, rose didnt contribute to it at all. She gave this famous speech at the detroit book fair about why shed written the books. And she was only halfway through at that point. But i think you can tell that she had her own voice. She had her own style which was very different than roses. You know, she had a very plain spoken, not melodramatic, very factual and kind of affecting tone whereas roses contributions are often much more kind of hyperdramatic. More melodramatic. And more polished, sometimes. So it is possible to discern the different voices. And i think that a lot of what makes the little house books unique is lauras voice. Voice and her perceptions, her memories of what she saw and experienced. I have two completely unrelated questions. The first is, the books are somewhat fictionalized. How much would you say is history, and how much is fiction . I think whats in the books is often very factual and factually accurate. Laura really cared about getting things right. And described things quite accurately. For example, the you know, the famous locust plague on the banks of plum creek, very accurate description. What she left out was what happened to the family after that event. The, you know, period of kind of financial collapse and homelessness and drifting around. So a lot of how shes changing her story is leaving things out that she didnt want to write about, that she thought were not appropriate for children. The second question regarding her estate, is any part of her estate used to maintain the various sites, like mansfield and plum creek . Not directly, to my knowledge, i know that Roger Mcbride did give generously to some of the sites including mansfield, he was instrumental in setting up a museum. He also contributed items from his you know, from roses possessions to de smet. I know de smet has some of her furniture, and other materials he has. I dont know whether he set up any kind of permanent bequest, but i know that he did give them money. I think many of them, though, struggle for funding. And its too bad that theres not a kind of national, you know, support for those sites because literary sites really do need help. Didnt mansfield have plans to build another building or something recently . They did. It was opened a couple years ago. They have a new museum now. Any other questions . Well just wrap it up then. Thank you all so much for coming. Lets give a round of applause. A couple programs from our American History tvs real america series, first all the way home, 1957 film looking at changing racial demographics in u. S. Neighborhoods then its the american look, this film examines the style of mass goods produced in the 1950s, including classic american cars, well show you cable 26 pioneers induction ceremony, honoring those who made lasting contributions to the cable and broad band industry, more from reel america with crisis in a film about racial issues in american suburbs during the 1950s. A look at president ial leadership during the cold war with historian hitchcock, also the author of the age of eisenhower, america and the world in the 1950s. Then at 9 00 p. M. , a u. S. Constitutional debate, hosted by the colonial Williams Burg foundation, featuring a reenactment from Founding Fathers James Madison and george mason on issues from the bill of rights to slavery. Watch American History tv, this weekend, on cspan 3. With joe biden as president elect, stay with cspan for live coverage of the election process and transition of power. Cspan, your unfiltered view of politics. Up next on American History tv, author Donald Miller interviews Jessica Shattuck about her novel the women in the castle, she explains how her familys connection to nazi germany influenced her work and how her research informed her understanding of german citizens during world war ii, this onehour talk was part of a threeday conference hosted by