WEBVTT - 2. Heroine with a Thousand Faces 0:00:02.840 --> 0:00:05.240 How do you convey how much you loved the things 0:00:05.280 --> 0:00:07.840 you loved as a child? Is it even possible? 0:00:08.400 --> 0:00:11.920 I really liked Little House on the Prairie because it's 0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:15.200 cool to read about things stuff you've never done before. 0:00:15.600 --> 0:00:18.119 Read the books when I was a kid, and I 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:19.239 just loved them. 0:00:19.360 --> 0:00:23.040 I found Little Town on the Prairie and I was cooked. 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:25.599 We know, we never love anything the way we did 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:27.800 when we were seven or eight boys. 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:31.680 Ab an eight year old boy like me who grew 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:34.680 up on a farm in New York. Yeah, they used 0:00:34.680 --> 0:00:37.560 to live in this little mill sort of thingy. 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:39.320 I like that little house. 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:42.199 But is there a language to describe how deep this 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:44.599 kind of love goes, how formative it is. 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:47.159 I went through a phase where I wanted to be 0:00:47.200 --> 0:00:47.800 a pioneer. 0:00:48.040 --> 0:00:50.519 You see their relationship blossom and see them go through 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:52.240 happy times and struggle together. 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:55.800 It's like you're actually there when you're reading the book. 0:00:56.520 --> 0:00:58.680 It's almost like the things we love work their way 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:01.920 into our DNA and then seemed to reappear at key 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:02.880 moments in our lives. 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:06.760 The pandemic hid and I said, I haven't read those 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:10.679 things in years, And I thought, well, I'm imabit help everything. 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:13.520 I was doing was canceled. I need to do something interesting, 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:14.720 and I thought, well and go back. 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:16.520 I have time. I'll go read the Little House Books. 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:20.280 Some of you might recognize that voice. That's Alison Arngrim, 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:24.399 the actress who played Laura's iconic nemesis Nellie Olsen on 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:28.360 the hit television show Little House on the Prairie. During Lockdown, 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:30.640 Allison started reading the Little House Books out loud on 0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:33.200 Facebook for anyone who wanted to tune in. 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:36.520 So I got on Facebook and say, okay, guys, the 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:38.880 woman who wrote nine books, and I will read them all, 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:40.280 starting with book one? 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:41.320 Can you help me up? 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:42.160 Can you hear me? 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:42.959 Can you hear me? 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:47.480 Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:49.520 lived in the big I read the Little House Books 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:52.840 every freaking day. I read all nine books. A lot 0:01:52.880 --> 0:01:54.760 of people said it really got throm through the pandemic. 0:01:54.800 --> 0:01:58.320 I got a big commemorative thing from my local senator 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:01.960 for raising Marie during the pandemic, exploring the works of 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:04.480 lower ingles Wilder, increasing literacy rate, etc. 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:07.960 Et cetera, a thing, a proclamation. But why were all 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:10.560 these people tuning in to be read to? If you 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:13.639 were born during lockdown? There were plenty of options. Was 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:15.880 it the thrill of being read to by Nelly? Was 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:19.160 it the tale of the Ingles, self sufficiency, the coziness 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:22.600 of the family, the sense of safety from the outside world. 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:25.840 Maybe it was all of the above. Allison has a 0:02:25.880 --> 0:02:26.600 theory of her own. 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:31.960 The problems of the Ingles are universal. The majority of 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:36.480 people on Earth don't actually have very much money, and 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:39.640 the Ingles live in like a two proom house with 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:42.600 a whole bunch of kids and worry if they're going. 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:43.480 To make it through the week. 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:48.480 That's really how Probably eighty ninety percent of humans on 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:51.480 the planet are living in a tidy place with a 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:53.480 lot of children, wondering if they'll have enough to eat. 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:57.280 The Little House on the Prairie series has remained popular 0:02:57.320 --> 0:02:59.800 since they were first published in the nineteen thirties at 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:03.440 the height of the Great Depression, like seriously popular. They've 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:07.679 sold more than sixty million copies worldwide. Their average rating 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:11.400 on Goodreads is four point two. Hundreds of thousands of 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:15.440 readers have reviewed them. Maybe it's more interesting to consider 0:03:15.480 --> 0:03:18.280 the books in the context of what Alson mentioned. It's 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:20.960 not just that they are popular, it's when they are 0:03:21.040 --> 0:03:25.560 extra popular The series seems to peak at key moments. 0:03:25.520 --> 0:03:29.079 The close of an era, the Great Big Spree, the Jazz. 0:03:28.800 --> 0:03:32.720 As it first emerged in the Great Depression, It resurged 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:35.560 along with the television show during the post Vietnam economic 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:37.000 hardship of the nineteen seventies. 0:03:37.120 --> 0:03:39.920 We'll want to work, but can't find jobs or product to. 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:41.480 Day's over, And then it made a return during the 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:42.840 global pandemic. 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:46.920 New York, California, Illinois, and Connecticut all ordering non essential 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:48.240 employees to stay home. 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:51.960 Readers seem to turn to Laura's books in greater numbers 0:03:52.120 --> 0:03:55.320 when times are hard. This is probably not a coincidence. 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:58.840 The time period Laura was writing about, the eighteen seventies, 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:03.520 was a gate of severe economic hardship in America was 0:04:03.640 --> 0:04:09.120 essentially the country's first Great Depression. During her childhood, Laura 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:16.840 survived debilitating hunger, poverty, child labor disease, and extreme environmental events. 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:20.400 And then, after all that, just when she should have 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:24.279 been at least slowing down, she did the opposite. At 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:28.719 age sixty three sixty three, she took pen to paper 0:04:29.200 --> 0:04:34.240 and wrote down her story. The result or fundamentally changed 0:04:34.320 --> 0:04:37.800 children's books and also how we understand a part of 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:42.479 American history. How did she do this? Who helped? How 0:04:42.600 --> 0:04:45.760 is this woman, after so much suffering, able to find 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:49.239 the magical details in all that deprivation, so that, nearly 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:52.760 a century later, in other times of hardship, so many 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:58.720 of us returned to her. I'm Glennis McNicol, and this 0:04:59.000 --> 0:04:59.560 is wilder. 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:50.080 We're going to start with the first one. All right, 0:05:50.120 --> 0:05:50.640 read the top. 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:55.520 What's that saying, Little House in the Big Wood. 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:58.520 That's our producer Joe reading the first Little House book, 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:01.320 Little House in the Big Wood, to her then four 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:03.800 year old son Charlie for the very first time. 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:08.000 Right, should we get started? So, as far as the 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:11.520 little girl could see, there was only the one little 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:14.720 house where she lived with her father and mother, her 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:20.599 sister Mary, and baby sister Carrie. The barrels of salted 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:23.920 fish were in the pantry, and yellow cheeses were stacked 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:24.920 on the pantry. 0:06:24.560 --> 0:06:26.560 Shelves, and one hung. 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:28.359 Making me. 0:06:29.279 --> 0:06:31.320 It was making me so hungry. 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:34.239 So Joe, how did Charlie like the book? 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:39.080 He loved it. He found it completely magical. He asked, 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:41.640 when we're going to move to a little house in 0:06:41.680 --> 0:06:46.560 the Big Woods and survive on bear and deer? And 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:49.240 play with pigs bladders. 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:52.440 Yeah, I think I could hear it in Charlie's voice, 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:55.800 and I think it's sort of the tone of his voice, 0:06:55.839 --> 0:07:01.200 and his response captures the challenge of talking about the 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:05.760 actual Little House books. They are magical, and they're so engrossing, 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:10.640 and they're perfectly formed, and like, how do you explain 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:14.200 that to someone who hasn't read them? So I feel like, 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:20.040 if you're a person who hasn't read these books, you're 0:07:20.160 --> 0:07:22.040 just going to have to take my word for it, 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:26.800 because I imagine there's something in everyone's life, Like there's 0:07:26.840 --> 0:07:30.080 something in your life that you have felt this strongly 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:32.840 about as a kid. So even if you don't understand 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:35.200 the books, you understand the feeling. 0:07:36.280 --> 0:07:38.880 Okay, all right, that's great, But I still think you 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:41.720 have to give our listeners just a little sense of 0:07:41.760 --> 0:07:44.400 the basic plot points. Are we on the moon? Are 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:45.520 there aliens involved? 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:46.080 When? 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:50.440 And where are we in space? What exactly happens in 0:07:50.480 --> 0:07:53.679 this book? Because unlike you, not everybody knows. 0:07:55.160 --> 0:07:58.160 I'm going to do my best. Okay, the Little House 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:01.720 in the Prairie book series is not so we tried 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:05.600 so many times to sum up this book series, and 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:09.840 none of it worked until I made a voice memo 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:13.280 for Joe from my bathtub and we really nailed it. 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:14.120 And here it is. 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:20.400 The books open Laura four years old, living in the 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:23.520 Big Woods of Wisconsin with her family, and she loves 0:08:23.680 --> 0:08:26.360 very much and it's very cozy and there's a lot 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:32.560 of animal slaughtering and food. And then Pa takes the 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:36.320 family to what is then called Indian Territory what is 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:39.920 now Kansas, and they legally squat there and build a house, 0:08:40.440 --> 0:08:43.520 and they have a lot of interactions with Native Americans, 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:47.199 and then we're told the government asked them to leave 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:49.320 because they shouldn't be there, and they're very angry about it. 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:53.120 And Pa takes them to Minnesota, Walnut Grove, Minnesota, where 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:56.440 they live in a dugout, and Laura meets her arch nemesis, 0:08:56.480 --> 0:08:59.480 Nellie Olsen, and then pap builds them a really beautiful 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:02.400 house based on the bumper crop he's expecting to get 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:06.240 and they move in, and then the bumper crop gets 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:09.040 eaten by a plague of grasshoppers for like. 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:10.560 Four years in a row. 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:14.080 And then paulmost dies in a snow bank and starves 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:18.559 to death, but he doesn't and then Mary Laura's older 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:23.160 sister goes blind, and pau goes to the Dakota Territories 0:09:23.200 --> 0:09:26.280 to work on the railroad, and the family follows and 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:29.800 they help build this town of Disment, South Dakota, and 0:09:29.840 --> 0:09:33.400 they survive a historically long and bad winter that's in 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:34.160 the history books. 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:37.160 The whole town almost starves to death, but they don't. 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:41.280 And then Laura's our, she Nemesisnelli, arrives again. Laura goes 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:44.719 to school, she meets her future husband, Almonzo. They want 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:47.120 to send Mary off to college for the blind, and 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:49.160 so Laura goes to work as a school teacher at 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:52.080 the age of fifteen in a very remote place and 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:55.560 the family she's living with, the wife is so angry 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:56.880 to be there that she in the middle of the night, 0:09:56.960 --> 0:09:59.679 she tries to stab her husband to death. Laura finishes 0:09:59.679 --> 0:10:02.200 her job, comes home with the money, comes back to 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:05.920 her family, and then Almonzo continues to court her, and 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:06.680 then she. 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:08.360 And Almonzo get married. 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:11.320 And the very last book, which is published after Laura died, 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:12.200 is but the first four. 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:15.440 Years of their marriage. There you go, that's the plot 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:19.679 point overview. Wow, And it sounds crazy when I say it, 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:22.960 but the thing to know is that all of these 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:29.400 books involve these like incredible tactile descriptions of food and clothing. 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:33.280 She's always talking about how prettily Ma has organized the house. 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:37.800 Laura's like the original lifestyle blogger, and everything in their 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:43.160 home is cheerful and snug. But there's also this dark 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:47.000 undercurrent of danger that runs through everything, which I loved 0:10:47.040 --> 0:10:49.960 as a kid. But most importantly I think is that 0:10:50.320 --> 0:10:55.320 parts of these books are deeply problematic, and particularly the 0:10:55.320 --> 0:10:58.800 third book, Little House on the Prairie, when they're illegally 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:03.440 squatting on osage and there are quite a few violent, 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:06.800 racist descriptions of Native Americans. This is what gets the 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:09.120 most attention when people are critical of the books. But 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:10.680 I think it's important to note that there are not 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:14.080 the only problematic issues. There are plenty of examples, like 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:16.480 in the seventh book, Little Town on the Prairie, there's 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:19.840 an entire chapter about a minstrel show that Pop participates 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:23.000 in where he's dressed in blackface. At the same time, 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:26.480 these books are about a complicated girl. She gets angry, 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:29.080 she gets jealous, she has it ventures, and she has 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:31.840 a lot of agency like she also loves her family, 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:34.760 so much, and the books hold all of this. 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:39.200 So if you had to say, in one line or less, 0:11:39.720 --> 0:11:42.920 what the thing that you loved the most about the 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:45.400 books was, what would it be. 0:11:46.600 --> 0:11:49.240 That Laura is a real person and the things she 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:50.440 wrote about happened to her. 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:54.040 Because there's a lot of stories about girls out there, 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:57.720 But what you're saying is that none of those were 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:01.360 real people, and you related to the fact that she 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:05.520 was a real person who actually lived these adventures. 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:09.000 Yeah, that's the key here, right, She's real, but she 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:11.280 also made you feel like you were in it with her, 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:13.080 that you were walking in her shoes. 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:18.440 But is that story the truth? The actual truth? 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:23.000 No, They're shelved in the fiction section for a reason. 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:27.360 So what does it mean that these stories were fictionalized 0:12:27.400 --> 0:12:29.160 that they ended up in the fiction section. 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:33.400 I think what it really means is that reading these 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:36.040 books as a kid felt like they sort of emerged 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:40.920 perfectly formed, directly from Laura's head, And the truth was 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:44.839 they didn't, obviously, But you know, even more than that, 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:49.160 these books had a long road to publication. They were 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:53.840 very intentionally crafted by a variety of people. I sort 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:57.880 of think of it like like the children's literature version 0:12:58.000 --> 0:13:01.079 of taking a cotton swab the inside of your cheek 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:03.439 and then you know, you send it off to ancestry 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:07.400 dot com to find out who all your ancestors are. 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:11.480 So when I say that I love these books so 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:14.880 wholeheartedly as a child that I feel like you could 0:13:14.880 --> 0:13:17.440 take my DNA and put under a microscope and you'd 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:22.600 find like braids there and probably like some wolves, then 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:26.640 I want to understand what else is in this DNA, 0:13:26.920 --> 0:13:29.719 or like, who else is here? If these books were 0:13:29.760 --> 0:13:32.320 so formative to me and to a lot of people, 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:36.079 then what is forming us? Or perhaps the better question 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:39.320 is who? And that's where we're going to go after 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:41.600 the break. We are literally going to go on the 0:13:41.640 --> 0:13:44.679 map to where the books actually begin and find out 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:45.520 who is behind them. 0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:01.640 Day a misery than Simans Do I get off her 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:03.760 city limit Mansfield. 0:14:03.960 --> 0:14:07.000 I'm in a place called Mansfield, Missouri with our producer Emily. 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:10.200 Mansfield might not mean anything to you until I tell 0:14:10.200 --> 0:14:13.000 you that Mansfield, Missouri is in the Ozarks, an hour 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:16.160 west of Springfield, Missouri. All I knew as a kid 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:17.720 is that it was on a different page of my 0:14:17.760 --> 0:14:21.760 parents Atlas and that Laura lived there. It always felt 0:14:21.800 --> 0:14:23.160 mysterious all the places. 0:14:23.600 --> 0:14:28.440 Mansfield, Missouri was on the back cover of every single 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:31.560 Laura Ingla's book I owned, so just even driving into 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:34.080 it still I feel like a little kid. 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:36.840 Like driving into a map that I was so obsessed with. 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:40.000 Mansfield isn't in the Little House books, but it is 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:43.040 the site of their creation story. Its main attraction is 0:14:43.160 --> 0:14:46.920 Rocky Ridge Farm, a picturesque white farmhouse perched on a hill. 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:50.520 This is where Laura, her husband Almonzo, and their young 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:54.440 daughter Rose settled in eighteen ninety four. Rocky Ridge is 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:58.200 Laura's house. Laura designed every inch of it to her specifications, 0:14:58.680 --> 0:15:00.800 right down to the height of the kitchen canters because 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:04.200 she was so tiny. She also designed her own writer's 0:15:04.240 --> 0:15:07.080 book looking out on the lawns, and then Almonzo built 0:15:07.080 --> 0:15:08.120 it all for her. 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:11.200 I mean this setup is fantastic. 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:12.920 Yeah to me. 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:15.280 I live in this house as a writer. This is amazing, right, 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:18.000 I mean, there's anyone it's amazing. But man, the place 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:20.360 converted the small radio chest under the tall window to 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:23.200 a storage chest when it stopped working. On the opposite 0:15:23.240 --> 0:15:25.200 walls or it's desk where many of the Little House 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:26.000 books were written. 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:29.840 This is the place where the sausage got made, or, 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:32.800 in Laura's case, this is the place where she described 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:35.440 how sausages got made in a way that made children 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:36.760 want to make sausages. 0:15:37.360 --> 0:15:39.000 Her blue shawl was kept handy on the back of 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:41.200 the chair to warm her shoulders. The daybed couch served 0:15:41.200 --> 0:15:42.920 as a handy place to sleep in the early morning 0:15:42.960 --> 0:15:44.520 hours after she had written through most of the night. 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:47.160 She's a nighttime writer. The day bed isn't here. 0:15:47.320 --> 0:15:47.760 Wow. 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:51.040 Rocky Ridge is a place you go to encounter Laura 0:15:51.080 --> 0:15:54.040 the writer, not the children's book character, but the woman 0:15:54.040 --> 0:15:57.320 who wrote the books. The Rocky Ridge Museum lives many 0:15:57.320 --> 0:16:00.440 of the most well known artifacts from Laura's books. The 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:03.320 piece of lace Ida gives her before her wedding, the 0:16:03.360 --> 0:16:05.800 glass plate Laura saves from their burning house in the 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:10.160 first four years. It also holds the most important artifact. 0:16:12.200 --> 0:16:19.840 It's pause actual fiddle. That's intense. It was such a 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:21.720 it's like a character in the book. It's not like 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:25.600 it is. They don't just have Pau's fiddle. Once a 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:33.440 year they take it out and they play it. Laura's 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:37.040 daughter Rose wrote that before they left South Dakota, Pa 0:16:37.240 --> 0:16:40.680 told Laura he was leaving the fiddle to her. He said, Laura, 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:44.360 you've always stood by us. When the time comes, I 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:45.760 want you to have the fiddle. 0:16:47.560 --> 0:16:50.800 It's very intense of him standing in front of a window, 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:53.560 that she wrote the books, but also the way she 0:16:54.320 --> 0:16:58.440 the idea that that's what is seen through the windows 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:00.600 now is like this, but not just the legacy of 0:17:00.600 --> 0:17:03.400 her books. It's like the legacy of the thing she 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:05.639 loved the most, which was her father, and the music 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:09.920 so extraordinary. 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:13.760 Laura's entry into writing began when Rose, already a successful 0:17:13.800 --> 0:17:16.920 full time journalist, encouraged her mother to try her hand 0:17:17.000 --> 0:17:19.360 at it. And the truth was Laura needed to bring 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:22.320 in more money. The farm was barely making ends meet. 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:26.080 Starting in nineteen eleven, when Laura was in her mid forties, 0:17:26.520 --> 0:17:29.159 all the way through nineteen twenty four, she had a 0:17:29.160 --> 0:17:33.160 farm calm in the Missouri Ruralist under the byline missus A. J. Wilder, 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:39.320 Laura wrote pieces titled Economy and Egg Production and good 0:17:39.359 --> 0:17:41.439 Times on the Farm. It's easy to have fun if 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:44.359 you plan for it. Her writing was practical and geared 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:47.520 towards other farm wives like herself, and yet, even then, 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:51.040 amidst all the egg advice, Laura was envisioning more. 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:55.719 I think she always had a sense of, you know, 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:57.919 wanting to be a writer. 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:02.760 That's Caroline Fraser, author of Prairie Fires The American Dreams 0:18:02.800 --> 0:18:05.679 of Laura Ingles Wilder, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:06.639 twenty eighteen. 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:10.000 I mean, I think it was very kind of a 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:14.600 vague notion, but I think those feelings were there. 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:18.720 Laura Ingles Wylder was a woman who'd been harboring some 0:18:18.880 --> 0:18:22.560 big dreams for a long time. In nineteen fifteen, at 0:18:22.600 --> 0:18:25.440 age forty eight, Laura made a cross country trip to 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:28.240 visit her daughter, Rose, traveling all the way to San 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:32.879 Francisco by herself. During the lengthy visit, Rose encouraged her 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:35.320 mother to pitch some stories about her travels as a 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:38.080 way to make money. In one of her letters home 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:41.080 to Almonzo, Laura tells him, I intend to try to 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:45.520 do some writing that will count. Of course, all aspiring 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:48.040 writers want to do writing that will count and pay. 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:51.040 Not all aspiring writers have a daughter who's one of 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:55.280 the most successful freelance writers in the country. America loves 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:57.800 the story of someone pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:00.879 But as we all know, behind most access stories is 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:05.240 a case of someone who knew someone who knew someone, 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:08.400 and in Laura's case, that's someone is Rose, and Rose 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:11.560 knew everyone. Perhaps the best description for Rose is that 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:16.440 she was Laura's fixer. But back to Laura and her 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:19.560 desire to do writing that will count. For Laura, what 0:19:19.640 --> 0:19:23.480 counted most was her family and her childhood memories of them. 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:26.320 Caroline Fraser thinks it goes all the way back to 0:19:26.320 --> 0:19:28.520 when Laura had to leave her family behind and just 0:19:28.680 --> 0:19:30.640 met South Dakota. 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:34.040 While I was writing the timeline, I could see clearly 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:38.320 that when she and Almnta come to the point where 0:19:38.359 --> 0:19:43.240 they have to give up in South Dakota, that leapt 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:50.000 out to me as a profound emotional moment in her 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:53.399 life because leaving then is not what it is now, 0:19:54.240 --> 0:19:58.760 and so it really represented a wrenching kind of loss 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:03.359 of her former, her life, and of her relationships that 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:08.919 I think is the primary motivation behind her wanting to 0:20:08.960 --> 0:20:10.879 write about her life. 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:16.120 Decades passed between Laura leaving her family and writing about them. 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:19.120 Laura first sat down to write about her childhood following 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:21.920 the death of her older sister Mary in nineteen twenty eight. 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:27.240 Laura was sixty one. Mary's death wasn't the first family loss. 0:20:27.800 --> 0:20:31.280 Laura's ma, Caroline Ingalls, had died a few years earlier. 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:34.639 Pa had been dead since nineteen oh two, but there 0:20:34.680 --> 0:20:38.919 was something about Mary. When Laura was twelve, Mary had 0:20:38.960 --> 0:20:42.399 gone blind and Pa had tasked Laura with being Mary's eyes. 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:47.360 Laura spent the rest of her childhood literally describing everything 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:51.080 she saw to her sister. Something about losing Mary, for 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:53.359 whom she had been the eyes for so many years, 0:20:54.040 --> 0:20:57.000 a responsibility that turned her into the descriptive genius she 0:20:57.040 --> 0:21:00.480 eventually became. Prompted Laura to start writing about her her youth. 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:04.840 She wanted to preserve her father's stories, the ones she 0:21:04.880 --> 0:21:06.120 and Mary had grown up with. 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:08.040 At least in the beginning. 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:12.560 She was inspired by those stories and wanted to keep 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:15.440 those stories alive because she felt they were extraordinary. 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:19.359 That's Pamela smith Hill, author of Laura Ingalls Wilder, A 0:21:19.400 --> 0:21:23.000 Writer's Life. This is something a lot of Wilder scholars 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:25.760 agree on. By the time Laura had lost her paw 0:21:26.080 --> 0:21:29.440 and her ma and her older sister Mary, she felt 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:32.040 an overwhelming urge to preserve their family history. 0:21:32.920 --> 0:21:35.960 Laura Inglees Wilder said that she felt that her paws 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:38.560 stories were too good to be altogether lost. 0:21:40.160 --> 0:21:43.680 So Mary dies and Laura decides she's going to write 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:46.959 a memoir. At age sixty three, she sits down at 0:21:46.960 --> 0:21:50.160 her custom built desk and tries to describe their life 0:21:50.160 --> 0:21:53.399 for everyone who couldn't be there to see it. Laura 0:21:53.400 --> 0:21:58.119 called the resulting manuscript Pioneer Girl, and this is key. 0:21:58.240 --> 0:21:59.640 She was writing it for grown ups. 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:04.800 The idea was that she would write her autobiography and 0:22:04.840 --> 0:22:09.240 that Lane would try to market it to magazines as 0:22:09.400 --> 0:22:15.399 a serial Saturday evening post, Good Housekeeping McCalls one of 0:22:15.440 --> 0:22:18.359 those major magazines of the time period. 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:23.320 That's Nancy Tasted Koppel, the director and editor in chief 0:22:23.400 --> 0:22:26.840 of the Pioneer Girl Project, a research and publishing initiative 0:22:27.040 --> 0:22:28.960 of the South Dakota Historical Society. 0:22:29.960 --> 0:22:34.720 So she was writing for adults, but the subject matter 0:22:35.240 --> 0:22:38.760 was her own use, her life from the time she 0:22:38.920 --> 0:22:41.840 was two years old to the time she was eighteen 0:22:41.920 --> 0:22:43.760 years old. 0:22:45.040 --> 0:22:48.320 Pioneer Girl is heavy on description but light on structure. 0:22:49.040 --> 0:22:51.800 Laura wrote it in pencil on the popular Big Chief 0:22:51.840 --> 0:22:54.560 Indian tablets you could buy at the drug store. There 0:22:54.560 --> 0:22:58.199