Wilder - BONUS: Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

In all of our research for this show, one of the scholars who has most influenced our thinking on Laura and her work is Caroline Fraser, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning biography, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Laura obsessives know that Prairie Fires is the motherload when it comes to understanding Laura’s life. It provides a detailed historical account of her childhood and takes a holistic look at the fraught personal and working relationship that Laura had with her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. As we put together our final episode, we’ve been revisiting Caroline’s book and the amazing interview we did with her. Today, we wanted to share the extended interview with you, as a deeper dive into Laura’s life, and to help set the scene before Glynnis comes to some big conclusions in our series finale. Go deeper: Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires Follow us for behind the scenes content! @WilderPodcast on TikTok@Wilder_Podcast on Instagram We want to hear from you! If listening to Wilder has changed your thinking on Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House books, send a voice memo to [e-mail]. You might be featured in our final episode ;) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to the restless ones available on the IHR radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, Wilder listeners. It's producer Emily again with one more very special episode. Thank you for your patience as we're working on our final episode, and it's going to be well worth the wait. I promise it's the episode where Glenis will come to some big conclusions on how to think and feel about Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Over the past year, as we researched and reported the show, one of the people who's really shaped our thinking on Laura and her work is Caroline Fraser, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Laura, Prairie Fires. You've heard us mention Prairie Fires a lot in the show, and you've even heard Caroline in previous episodes. But as we're coming to some big conclusions on all things Laura, we thought it was worth airing her full interview. Before we get started, I actually have a request for you. We're still accepting listener voice memos for our final episode, so if listening to Wilder has changed your thinking

on Laura and the Little House books, or just made you feel some big feelings about topics like children's literature, Native American representation, how we portray American history, we want to hear your thoughts. Just record a voice memo through the app

that's preloaded onto whatever phone you have. And email it to wilderpodcast.org. If you do, we might just respond to it in our final episode. We can't wait to hear your voices. Now on with the show. [♪ Music playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, such huge fans of your book. And everyone we've interviewed for this podcast is just blown away by it. So I think my first question is,

before we just get to the direct writing in the book, I'm just curious, I know, because I've been reading you for quite some time, but I'm just curious if you could talk a little bit about what your relationship to Laura was prior to doing prairie fires and how you came to write this book, which is such a huge undertaking?

Yeah, well, you know, I read the books when I was a kid and like millions of other kids, I just loved them. They were among the books that I read over and over again. That's what I did with, you know, the things that I really responded to was just to kind of have it on a loop almost and just be constantly rereading and they became very well known to me. And then some years later, I had the experience, which I think a number of other fans of the Little Housebooks had, which was that I was listening to NPR in the morning before going to work and heard a piece about a biography of Laura's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, that made the argument that Rose was really the author of the Little Housebooks, and I was just, you know, shocked and and floored kind of by hearing that and was just outraged and kind of intrigued, like,

you know, could this really be true? And that was the thing that kind of set me on writing initially, first about that biography and the question of Wilder's authorship of her books. And that was what led many years after that to my editing the Little Housebooks for the Library of America. And it was really preparing that edited version. I mean, we didn't edit the text, but I wrote little notes on certain things in the text and wrote a timeline of Wilder's life. And as I was writing that timeline, I came to feel like there was a really great story about her life that hadn't really been told yet. I mean, there were biographies for children. There was a biography for adults, which was quite good, but I didn't really feel that the relationship between Laura and Rose

had really been explored. And the authorship question was still kind of hanging out there. We're going to get to Rose in a bit, because I have a number of questions. But since we're on the writing of the book, I'm curious, you spent so much time with Laura, the real person to write this biography. Did your sense of her change? How do you think about her now that you know so much about her? Is there a gap between who she was to you

and the little housebooks growing up and the fully fleshed person that you have come to bring to the page now. Oh, sure. Yeah, I mean, I think as a child reading the books, I just sort of took the books at face value, which I think a lot of readers did and have and probably continue to do.

You know, that as a kid, I didn't have a particularly sophisticated understanding of what was the difference between fiction and nonfiction. And so I just assumed, okay, these books are by Laura Ingalls' Wilder, and they're about Laura Ingalls, so they must be true. So that was who Laura was to me, was the Laura in the books, the way that she has presented. But over the years as an adult and doing the work on the biography, I came to see that she was much, much more complex person than I had ever appreciated. That her adult life was really beset by all kinds of, you know, tragedies that are not really dealt with in the books except for, you know, the last one that was not published until after she had died.

And I also, you know, came to appreciate that her relationship with her daughter was very complex and was itself, you know, kind of a tragedy in her life that was just never resolved in the way that a lot of relationships between mothers and daughters are not resolved, although theirs was possibly worse than some in the sense that they worked together. They had a very long and complicated working relationship that itself engendered all kinds of guilt and shame and, you know, joy too. I mean, I don't want to say that it was all bad, but it was very complicated. And something that, you know, I think has really stayed with me as the sense that we love the Little House books in part because they give us this idea of a kind of ideal family that even though they went through all these tribulations and adventures and difficulties,

they still remained a cohesive, loving family. But in her own life, you know, Wilder wasn't really able to achieve that. Maybe it's not achievable, but I think for her it was a real struggle to maintain the relationship with her daughter. She seems to have maintained it with her husband to some degree. I think you say in the book that she described it as the We Are In Great Sympathy with each other. It doesn't use the word love necessarily, but I do get the sense that that marriage at least was very close. And I'm on so had a very high tolerance. It sounds like for complicated women. Yeah, for sure. Um, yes, she, you know, that relationship was strong, I think till the end, although beset by all kinds of difficulties and things, I think they probably never really talked about

or addressed directly because that was just how you live. If somebody had an illness or disability or, as El Manso did, did you talk about it? Probably not. And I don't think that they probably did. It almost seems like a survival mechanism. Right. I think, and what you just raised about how complicated and difficult her life was,

like to talk a little bit about why she sat down to write the books, and the divide between how hard her life was, and the way she manages to depict it in the books is extremely significant to me. I'm wondering what you think about that, if that was shocking or why did none of that make it into the books, do you think? They are books for children. And I think that she, especially, and also Rose had a very strong sense

of what was appropriate for children, what was not, what was too much. I mean, they did show quite a bit of the kind of desolation and desperation of their lives in the long winter. That's the book that comes close as I think to showing how on the edge their lives were at moments. But I also think, and this is something that became sort of clear to me as I was writing the timeline of her life, that there was a huge element of nostalgia in writing these books for her for Laura. And while I was writing the timeline, I could see clearly that when she and El Manzo come to the point where they have to give up in South Dakota,

they've gone through all these, you know, losses and tragedies in the houses burned down, and they realize they're going to have to leave. They're going to have to leave the state and start over somewhere else, and that that, of course, will necessitate leaving behind her family. That leapt out to me as a profound emotional moment in her life, because leaving then is not what it is now. I mean, now you can visit your family or relatives, even if you move halfway across the country, you can still be in touch, You can still have that closeness, but that just was not available to her. And so it really represented a wrenching kind of loss of her former life and of her relationships

to her family and what those relationships consisted of. And that, I think, is the primary motivation behind her wanting to write about her life. I mean, it took a while for her to kind of figure out how to write about it, whether it was going to be a memoir or children's books or whatever that was a bit of a struggle to kind of figure out. But she clearly wanted to do that for a bit of a struggle to kind of figure out, but she clearly wanted to do that for very long time. And I think it's that emotion, that nostalgia is so powerful in the books that keeps readers coming back to them. You get a sense of that wrenching this. It always stands out to me and the end of these happy golden years, which is supposed to be, you know, the happy ending,

and she's fallen in love and is going off with her husband and yet there is an aspect of tragedy to that when she's leaving her family behind. It felt even as a child, it just, it made me want to cry. It's just like, I can't believe she's leaving. Right. It did make me wonder. I mean, again, we'll get to Rose, but in reading these books and then in reading your book, and in really taking a grown-up understanding of relationships to it, the sense of Pa as a child was this very magical, exciting person, and as a grown-up, I sort of look at him and think, he's dragging this family around. He can't quite support them. But part of me in reading the books now wonders if she was sort of redeeming, it was like an argument to redeem her father's life in a way. Oh yeah, I think that's really true.

And you know, she says something very similar to that. You know, she acknowledged that he wasn't a great provider. And so, you know, she said, Paul wasn't a businessman. He was a poet. And you know, I forget how the rest of the sentence goes. But she knew, I think, that he had his limitations, that he had presented real challenges to her mother, for example,

to try and keep the family together and away from just complete disintegration based on losing everything, which they approach at various moments. I think the books are very much an attempt to recognize and to portray the best of her father, who she obviously adored and loved deeply. And she again and again, in the manuscripts and in her discussions with Rose, you can see her kind of stepping back from any printed acknowledgement that he was close to bankruptcy or that he couldn't pay his debts or, you know, all that stuff gets left out. There's also, in sort of, in the same vein, all of the energy and detail she puts towards food. And I think reading your book again and understanding

how hungry they were and the amount of food that's in these books and farmer boys have been described as food porn. Oh yeah, I think that you know the food and farmer boy is intense. And it makes a really interesting contrast to read that book with the rest of the series, you know, realizing that of course it's written during the Depression, but also kind of comparing how successful Almanzo's family was as farmers to the Ingalls family, which was not putting that kind of food on the table. I want to go back to your book for a second.

I am not the only one who responded to this, but your decision to open the book with the US Dakota War was very interesting to me, and I'm curious how that who responded to this, but your decision to open the book with the US Dakota War was very interesting to me. And I'm curious how that decision came to be. What was your thinking behind that? That was one of the reasons why I wanted to write the book in the first place.

And that happened because I was doing that work for the Library of America and writing notes, defining terms or place names, or things that wouldn't be necessarily known to a general audience that wouldn't occur in addiction area or whatever, and one of those things that left out at me while doing that in Little House on the Prairie was the reference to the Minnesota massacre.

And I think, I mean, how many times had I read that reference as a kid reading the books, probably a dozen times, if not more. And when I finally had to define what that was, I mean, I stopped me because I realized, I don't even know what this is. Like, what is she talking about? And so I looked it up and I was just blown away, with the answer to what that is. I mean, I just was transfixed by the story of that event, which was the US Dakota War of 1862. It was the most bloodiest and most horrifying

spectacles of American history. And certainly, you know, as the event that tipped off the next 30 years in terms of, you know, Indian policy and Indian removal and so forth, it was really quite shattering to kind of figure out what that is. And I just thought, I have to write about this. I really want to write about this

because it puts her entire childhood, but also particularly the events that she covers in Little House and the Prairie, which is the most important of the series, I think, in an entirely different light than I had ever understood before. And so I just felt like I have to open with this. This is just in many ways who she was, what her life was, what her mother's relationship and fear, intense fear of Indians. That's what that was all about. And I was also sort of shocked at my own ignorance, you know, having then discovered what this

is all about. Like, why didn't I know about this? You know, why doesn't everybody know about this? And certainly people in Minnesota know about it. I think it's now, it's commonly taught there. But it just seemed to me something that was just waiting to be described and discussed in relationship to little house of the prairie. It changed my entire understanding of that book. I am fascinated that you think little house in the prairie is her most important book. I'm curious to know why you think that. I think it also is the most important historically in terms of its relationship to history and, you know, the history of the American Indian, on the Great Plains, the sense of what her father

is doing there on that property, the homesteading movement, and the writing. I mean, there's amazing stuff in each book, but the presentation of her childish view of what she's seeing on the prairies, her reaction to seeing the Indians ride away as that chapter at the end has it. I think raises the level of that book to real literature. It's such a complicated book in a way. The ending is so, is so strange and keeps you wondering. First, her reaction to the seeing the Indians right away and the wanting the Indian baby, crying out, I want that Indian baby paw. Get me that Indian baby. It's such a weird and just unforgettable moment about the acquisitive and appropriation of white settlers on the plains and it's just an indelible moment.

But then there's also her father's tantrum at the end of, if I'm gonna be denied this land, I'm gonna just pick up and we're leaving this afternoon. It's just such a precipitous act. And that too gives you a sense of how entitled settlers were in a way. I mean, I'm not saying this about Paul particularly as an individual, I'm just saying, you know, that that's a lasting image of how people felt, how white people felt about land that they had no title to. I mean, that clearly was a direct memory, but she was much younger

when she was actually in Indian territory than she is depicted. And I was curious that you seem to really feel strongly that that book comes from direct memory, whereas I think I eventually read it as a combination of her memory and stories she'd been told by Pa growing up and Ma presumably. It's probably a combination of direct memories and reconstructing from, you know, stories she heard, but I think she absolutely remembered going across the plains, looking out the, you know, sort of hole in the wagon cover and seeing these prairies, you know, in the grasses. I think she totally remembered the scene where they crossed the river and Paul almost loses control of the wagon and they're nearly swept away. That seems to have been very closely remembered and the thing about the Peppus, which is, I mean, she said as much that this was, she remembered it and just unforgettable moment for her. You said just a little bit earlier what we know today about

history and white settlers, but she was writing this in the 30s, so she had some understanding of that history at her disposal. And I'm really struck now, not much of that makes it into the book. And I think this is the source of so much of the controversy around the book. I wouldn't exaggerate how much she may have known about the history. There were a couple of elements that she tried to find out the name of the chief who her father may have encountered. But she didn't do very much in the way of reading history that we know of. And so I don't really know how much she knew. She did know that the land that her father had built on did not belong down. She knew that. She knew he was a squatter, which is an interesting term that she uses in

letters, acknowledging, of course, she doesn't use that. I don't think in the book itself. book itself. So I would not want to sort of, you know, bring a lot of present day expectations to try and explain what she knew, what she didn't know. I think she knew her, her father was, was in some ways skating up the ice in Kansas and that that's part of why they ended up leaving. But I don't know that she had any kind of modern conceptions about the fairness or the ways in which her family was illegally appropriating things that didn't belong to them. How do you feel about the more recent criticism? What do you think is her responsibility? It was her responsibility and is this criticism fair? I guess. I don't have any problem with criticism. I mean, and I think the more we do it, the better off we are, the more we talk about what these books mean about what's left out, about what is included, about racism,

about misogyny, you know, language that is disturbing on, you know, all kinds of different levels. So criticism, there's nothing wrong with criticism. What I think there's something wrong with is banning books or censoring books that I don't think is appropriate. I do think that has happened with the little house books. And I do think there is an argument for not reading these books to young children in a completely uncritical fashion. There have been stories about Native American kids going to school in Minnesota and other states and having these books read to them as if this is just these books are great and just accept it. That clearly is just not going to fly anymore. But can you teach the books? I don't see why not. I mean, I think you would have to discuss these kinds of issues. That, of course, has to become a minefield all over the country, that whole issue. I can't do anything about that,

but I will say that I just, I don't think there's any problem in criticizing or teaching the books in a critical way, in a way that opens up all these issues for discussion. Sonoro and I hearts my Gultura podcast network, present, Princess of South Beach, season two. Gas crews back. Guess who's back? Did you miss me? The Caledons are back with a new season of lies, scandals, and skeletons in the closet.

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Before they sell out at AXS.com. That's AXS.com. Out of the shadows is a podcast on America's immigration system told through the eyes of our Latino community. I didn't understand how difficult life was going to be being a doctor in the first and I mean I received my doctor in the age of 14. This season is about our dreamers, undocumented students who challenge Barack Obama to pass DACA or deferred action for childhood arrivals. I'm Patty Rodriguez.

And I'm Eric Galindo. Follow us as we tell the incredible truth story of a group of young people who took on the system and changed the course of history. The way to survive in the United States as an undocumented immigrant was to be invisible and that changed completely with the dreamers. The movement pushed Obama and his administration to create DACA

because otherwise we would just kept supporting all of us. Sometimes in order to survive you need to step out of the shadows. Listen to out of the shadows dreamers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's dive into Rose. When I finished your book, I wanted to write you a letter and say, how did you spend this much time with Rose?

Because she was exhausting to me. Yeah, just generally speaking, what was it like to get to know Rose? Well, I think I have similar feelings about her. She's just a kind of lavishly talented, but incredibly frustrating personality. Somebody who has a lot to, you know to offer the world and makes a lot of really questionable decisions about how to further her career and her personal life and her relationship with her mother and her politics. People sometimes ask me, why did you talk so much about, you know, why is, and it was just, it was absolutely inevitable. I mean, because she was wrapped up so

closely in the pushing her mother to do this writing in editing and revising and getting the books published, and even in the post publication phase, where she's trying to control the legacy of the books and how people think about them and trying to craft this very political understanding of their role. She lived with her mother and with her parents, you know, on the farm for years of her adult life, very critical years for the creation of these books in the 1930s. And so it's impossible to leave her out. She has just woven into the whole story in ways that you cannot ignore.

I mean, the big elephant, the room question always, that led you to write this. What are your thoughts on how much of the books she's responsible for? I think that we can identify, you know, based on manuscript evidence and also style, we can certainly is that she clearly wrote and kind of inserted herself, her own voice, into writing, and you can definitely recognize. We also know, you know, from the manuscript evidence that we still have from, you know, the long winter, how much Laura resisted Rose's suggestion and said, no, we're not going to do that. It was a real contrast of styles where Rose was bringing this kind of sense of stability and safety and sort of gentleness to the stories, some of which is quite necessary, I think.

But in other moments, you can see Laura's vision, which was a much more stark, more plain, more confrontational, a little bit almost. Like this was the way it was. This is how hard it was to live this life. That's Laura. So you can see their contrasting styles coming through. You can see Rose, I think you can hear her in some of the dialogue. So I think we know quite a lot just from the manuscript stuff that we do have and they both contributed a lot. But Laura was the person who wrote the books, you know Rose was an editor. She was certainly a heavier editor than most people might conceive, but that also is not unheard of. There's a lot of history in literature that shows, you know, editors who have played a very outside's role in crafting and cutting and to people who don't have that experience with publishing that may be a shock, but it's certainly a factor in many works. But I'm not one of those people who thinks that the book should be by Laura Ingalls-Wilder and Rose Wilder-Layne now. That's not how it works.

I think of Rose's career of writing the unauthorized biographies of Charlie Chaplin and Jack Lundin, and in some ways it seems like she was attempting in certain points to do the same with her mother and her mother was resisting, yeah. That resistance seems to grow stronger. In my mind, and it probably has something to do with her, writing about herself as an older character, but I feel Laura's presence exerted self increasingly

as the books go along. Yeah, so I think she definitely became more confident as the books were published and became popular, and you know, kids were writing to her and saying, oh, you know, what happens next? And I think she realized her worth because of those things and really began to assert herself more confidently with Rose. And how much of Rose's, I mean, you say she was very involved in keeping an eye on the legacy of the books and the political nature of them. I'm just curious what you mean by legacy, exactly, when you say that. Well, there's this whole period after her mother's death when she is asserting to various people who are, not just readers, but people who are trying to be involved

in the museum that became of her mother's house in Mansfield. She becomes quite adamant about insisting that everything in the books is true and that the books's represent an argument for her political stance, you know, that they're an argument for self-reliance, that they're a monument to hard work and, you know, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and all of that. I mean, she clearly wanted to present them in a public forum and did, you know, in letters to people

who she was, you know, working with and to her ankle-ite Roger McBride, who then himself runs for President as a libertarian. And so that's kind of one of the ways, one of the outgrowth, the things that happened as a result of her pushing this philosophy and including her mother's work as part of that philosophy. Do you think Laura shared any of those politics? She did. It's quite clear in letters that she wrote to Rose that she just accepted kind of unquestioningly a lot of roses more, you know, crazier assertions and conspiracy theories.

And they certainly shared at the beginning of FDR's push for the New Deal. They shared this, you know, dismay and ultimately contempt for New Deal policies for FDR, especially for Eleanor Roosevelt. Eleanor Roosevelt somehow came in for the worst of much of what they had to say. Yeah, she definitely did. She didn't publicize it in a way that rose. I mean, Rose made at her life's work to publicize these ideas in any way that Rose did. I mean, Rose made it her life's work to, you know, publicize these ideas in any way that she could. I mean, their relationship was so complicated. I think about how, when Laura sold little house in the big woods, Rose turned around and sort of secretly wrote, let the hurricane

roar. How damaging do you think that was to their relationship? It was damaging. I think the most surprising thing about it is that they were able to continue to work together professionally after that, because I think it was so upsetting to Laura. And Rose, it was kind of an expression of Rose's passive aggression of her trying to get back and her mother for things that had happened. There were all these old resentments and old assumptions. Rose was always saying, she won't let me grow up.

She doesn't see me as an adult. I can sympathize with Horace, I respect because in a lot of ways, Rose didn't grow up. I mean, she continued to be very irresponsible about money and about just being, you know, kind of honest with herself and honest in relationship to other people. I mean, people in Mansfield still,

there's still memories about this hanging around in Mansfield other people. I mean, people in Mansfield still, there's still memories about this hanging around in Mansfield. That's how big a deal it was. And so it is surprising that they were able to kind of continue on together with the books. Especially when you consider, and I know you make this point in the book, like, Laura had a temperance she could hold a grudge. It's lucky you weren't on his random bad side interaction, you know, in 1886 and low and behold, a hundred years later, you're still getting criticized in this book, but she managed,

I don't know if it was guilt or what, she managed to forgive her daughter, it seems like that the divide between those two aspects of her personality really stand out to me. Yeah, yeah, I think Laura did have a really hot temper. I think she knew it, she admitted it, to aspects of her personality really stand out to me. Yeah. Yeah. I think Laura did have a really hot temper. I think she knew it. She admitted it.

You know, Almanzo knew that. He talked about it. But I think she could also analyze herself later and say, oh, you know, I need to apologize for this. I think she did apologize for some of the ways, you know, in which she hurt Rose. I don't know that Rose ever kind of achieved that ability to kind of look at herself and say, what did I do wrong? And that seemed to be impossible for her, really painful for her. And Laura could also just be very sweet, you know, I mean, she had a sweetness to her character and a generosity of spirit, which is really admirable.

And sort of miraculous when you consider that she was working from the age of nine, she was sold during extraordinary responsibility. How does she not become a bitter person after years of that? I think some of that resentment of people that she expressed during the whole FDR period where she would kind of rail against people who didn't want to work hard enough or couldn't save money or, you know,

and it was as I talk about in the book, it was this like obvious contradiction, you know, because she herself had accepted aid from the government in certain ways, her family, the Ingalls family, had accepted aid. Why was that okay for them and not okay for other people during the Depression, the worst economic climate that had ever hit this country? And she just never seemed to see that. And I think that some of that bitterness that you're talking about came out in those moments. And it wasn't expressed so much personally as it was for Rose, who would attack people she knew. I mean, Rose

could be kind of vicious and anti-Semitic and racist and would attack individuals. You don't see that so much with Laura. You see her lamenting, you know, the state of the country and people who don't work hard and people who should just suck it up basically. But she was also generous, Laura, in her personal life. You know, she would give things to her sisters who were not as well off as she was. It was amazing. Understanding her childhood in Minnesota, particularly with the drought and the grasshoppers as a man made phenomenon.

And then understanding she's writing about that period, experiencing that period while she's writing it, and that to some degree, we're experiencing a very similar absence of government environmental calamity. And it sort of brings me to this idea of Laura. And maybe it's the now, it's now idea of Laura's almost like a time machine. We go through her books to these different periods, which are enormously relevant to the time we're living in at the same time.

Oh, yeah. And that's an interesting way to put it, because I think everybody's grandparents are sort of like that in a way. You know, they are, if you know what to ask them, if you know how to kind of draw out from them their experience, everybody who's lived that long life in which they went from covered wagons to airplanes or whatever, everybody is a time machine, but not very many people wrote down what their experience was. And that was the difference with Laura. I mean, I have so many moments now where I regret, you know, I should have asked my grandmother, you know, what

she thought about this or what happened then, and there's no record, you know, she's gone, there's no record. And so this is kind of one of the few records. I mean, there are certainly others, but this is, this is an important record of what that experience was like. Do you think that speaks to her global appeal? Oh, absolutely. I mean, anybody who has lived through that kind of privation on any level is going to respond to her portrayal

of that. And that's clearly what happened when when there were translations made of her work after the war in Japan that because they had just suffered the Japanese, you know, after their houses had been burnt, you know, the country destroyed mass starvation and hunger and all of that, and to read this, you know, account of people who survived, you know,

something like what they were surviving. I think what became really important for a lot of Japanese children. Sonoro and Iharts Mygultura Podcast Network present Princess of South Beach, Season 2. Gas crews back. Did you miss me? The Calderons are back with a new season of lies, scandals and skeletons in the closet. And speaking of closets.

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already a music festival now. Before they sell out at AXS dot com. That's AXS dot com. Out of the shadows is a podcast on America's immigration system told to the eyes of our Latino community. I didn't understand how difficult life was going to be being an adult minute person. I mean, I received my doctorate at age 14.

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Sometimes, in order to survive, you need to step out of the shadows. Listen to out of the shadows, dreamers, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Caroline, I have to ask you about the television show, which you hate as I understand it. So I never say that I hate the show, but I do have a lot of problems with Michael Landon and his, I just, I feel that he was quite a, you know, narcissist who kind of took over the whole property and made it about him in a lot of really funky ways that, you know, made the show really kind of a relic of the 70s and it's more about the 70s

than it is any other real time period. And there are certain aspects of that that are just kind of laughable, you know, that he's always walking around with the shirt off. And, you know, he's such a kind of preening presence in a way that I think would have been horrifying to actual people, you know, to Laura English loud. I think she would have been dumbstruck

at that portrayal of her beloved father. Yeah, I enjoyed you mentioning that in the book. I was born the year of the television show launch, so I grew up with them side by side. And I mean, I'm a book first, but I loved the TV show at Michael Landon. What was the response to this book from Laura Fanz, like for you?

Oh, you know, it was kind of fascinating because I mean, there are people who would come up to me and say, you know, do you think Laura was a good person or, you know, be really upset about the portrayal of Pa, which kind of surprised me because I liked Charles Ingalls in some ways. I mean, he obviously was a human being who made a lot of mistakes and have a lot of inappropriate attitudes or did things that I may not have agreed with or thought was smart, but I thought I portrayed him in a kind of sympathetic manner as his daughter saw him and also just in terms of, you know, his later life and what that life meant. And yet there were a lot of people who read the book who came away saying, go, pa, was a monster. So I mean, you just can't, uh, can't always predict how you look at a react. But I was very pleased with how strongly most people really reacted to the history of the books of the Dust Bowl stuff and the, the new deal stuff. And I think that was really meaningful to me that I was able to kind of include a bunch

of stuff that, you know, I mean, it's really a historical biography, not a literary biography, even though literary stuff is kind of more my experience, but I was really pleased at how interested and kind of involved people were with that stuff. I think Laura Functions, I may have said this earlier, but certainly for me, she functioned as a door I walked through. Because what's fascinating to me about the books is she seems so real, but there's so absent from it, sort of a wider sense of the history she exists and you understand the way she exists, but it's not put in the context of what's happening in the country at the time.

And so for me, anyway, it was, and certainly the opening of your book speaks to this. She's a doorway to walk through to find out all the other things that were happening around her. To me anyway, that's a very magical, fascinating part of the books that all of this is absent from her books, but yet she's opening us weirdly up to wanting to know more. Yeah, that's a great way to put it, because there were so many things that she could not talk about in a book for children. Say, and yet there are these little hints, you know, little things that when you read them as an adult, and I think her books are very readable, which not all books written for children are that accessible, you know, when you come back to them years later, but I think hers are. And I do think that they open up a whole realm of fascinating.

And in some cases quite gruesome history. Reveering this as a grown-up, I mean, there's an undercurrent as cozy as the books were, as nostalgic or magical. There's an undercurrent of danger and violence, maybe not in Farmer Boy, but in any, for every other one of the books, that I think appealed to me as a child, even though I couldn't articulate it, but I was very aware of as a grown-up. Absolutely. And I think that's why when you read them as an adult, they read much darker that through line of danger and, you know, the threat of starvation, of ruin, of the loss of the family comes through much more strongly when you read them as an adult.

Do you love Laura as much now after doing this book? That's a lot of time. I mean, in doing this podcast, I'm like, I am spending a lot of time with a person I loved deeply as a child. I'm just, and all of the complicated things that come out of that because you're, you know, you look at all of the complicated factors, but how do you feel about her now on the other side of this? You know, I do. I do. I still, I'd love her as a writer. I do have now a more, you know, sophisticated understanding of who she was as a person. They're definitely aspects of her that I don't particularly, her politics, I think her kind of incredible. I can understand them. I can understand being a farmer at that time and in that place and being horrified by

what farmers were being asked to do. I get that. I can understand that and empathize with it. And I can see her flaws, her inability to figure things out with her daughter, who obviously have lots of issues and problems. But she was who she was at the time. Those ways of dealing with problems were survival mechanism. those ways of dealing with problems were survival mechanism. And, you know, I see a lot of her in my own grandparents, you know, and their experiences and their inability to talk about sort of the hard things that happen in their lives. So I do, I think I have a lot of empathy and admiration for her, for her perseverance, you know, she just kept going, you know, despite

all kinds of obstacles in the way of her writing these books, for example, and really forged ahead in a way that a lot of people might not have. That was a wonderful way to end that. Thank you so much. That's a wonderful way to end that, thank you so much. Well, thank you. This episode was produced by me, Emily Marinoff, and Mary Doe. Sound Design and Mixing done by Amanda Rose Smith. Our theme and additional music is composed as as always, by the fantastic Elise McCoy. We are executive-produced by Glennis McNickle, Joe Piazza, Nikki Eator, and Ali Perry. Again, thanks for waiting as we work on our final episode.

We will be dark next week, but the finale will be here on August 31st, so mark your calendars. Trust me if I could send you all some pigs' ladders to keep you occupied until that episode, I would. But for now, just bake some bread or turn some butter or something or better yet, send us those voicemembers. We really do want them. So, Nora and I hearts my Cultura podcast network, present, Princess of South Beach, Season 2.

Did you miss me? The new season of lies, scandals and skeletons in the closet. I am proud to take office as your first openly gay mayor. This season, it's all out in the open. Listen to Princess of South Beach on the I Heart Radio app, a book podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. and 23rd. One State. At T-Mobile Arena. Stream Live. Holy on Hulu. This is the I Heart Radio Music Festival. By your tickets for our 2023 I Heart Radio Music Festival now. Starting at just $55 plus taxes and fees. At AXS.com. Get ready for season 4 of The Restless Ones, an original podcast presented by T-Mobile

for Business and I Heart Radio. Join me as I sit down for in-depth discussions with the people at the intersection of technology and business. You'll learn how each of these leaders is building a bridge to what's next and leveraging transformative technologies like 5G to create a more connected and meaningful future today. Listen to The Restless Ones, available on IHR radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.