decision, i sit down, the team knows it, and we go off. but basically you have to learn to use your people and listen to them. ok? [applause] thank you. thank you. >> you're watching american history tv all weekend every weekend on c-span3. >> pulitzer prize winner carolyn ander discusses the life novels of laura ingalls wilder. she explains the difference between actual events and the author's life. the jefferson county missouri library hosted this event. jane: good evening, everybody. we are really thrilled to see you here tonight. this is the third and final program in this series.

we have kept ms. fraser busy. we have had wonderful crowds turn out each time. of the books.ut it has been very satisfying. and to have c-span here taping this to show on television is the icing on the cake. it is such a wonderful feeling to know that something so positive representing jefferson county will be on national television. [applause] jane: my job tonight is to introduce two people on the podium who will be conducting this conversation. jane henderson is the editor at post dispatch. she grew up in st. louis. she graduated with degrees in journalism and english literature. she cut short her work as a grad student in english to go to work as a copy editor for the st. louis globe democrat.

she returned to st. louis and has been an editor and writer of the features department for 30 years. as a book editor, she assigns 300edits book reviews from or so new books each week. she has written stories about book trends and interviewed many authors including salman rushdie. and so tonight, she adds to that and she will be having a conversation with caroline fraser. caroline fraser is the editor of america -- and the author of three works of nonfiction. her latest book is "prairie fires, the american dreams of laura ingalls wilder.

it won the 2018 pulitzer prize for biography. the national book critics circle award for biography and the 2018 award. and was a finalist for a prize given by the columbia journalism school. carolyn fraser has traveled the country for two years, giving talks on lara ingalls wilder, laneaughter, rose ingalls and to groups large and small. formally on the staff of the new yorker, carolyn fraser's articles have also appeared in the new york review of books. and the london review among other publications. she is also the author of "god's perfect child, living and dying in the christian science church ing the world.

in 1979, she graduated from mercer island high school and in she received her phd in 1987, english and american literature. she lives with her husband in santa fe, new mexico. and we would like you all to give them a warm welcome tonight. [applause] i guess we are on. are you ready for us to go ahead? thank you very much for having me and asking me to talk to carolyn fraser. very exciting. readnk probably most of us the little house on the prairie books when we were young and maybe many others and watched it on tv.

which i did. i was getting to be a teenager at that time so sometimes i was a little skeptical and thought it was a little corny but we will get back to that later. how long have you researched and studied? and why did you start studying laura ingalls wilder? i also discovered the books as a kid 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 grandparents had been farmers in the midwest. from --e all immigrants mainly from scandinavian places and came to minnesota, wisconsin , and were farming in the late 1890's. and some of the same places, the 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 eye on graffiti of rose wilder lane, laura ingalls wilder's daughter who at one point was a pretty well-known journalist. 1990's, a biography of her appeared and it was quite a scandal actually because it claimed she was really the author. and he taught at the university of missouri. it created quite a sensation. like -- little fraud on the prairie.

so i reviewed that book and that is when i started looking at wilder's manuscript and kind of thinking about what an interesting story that was. jane: her life. caroline: yes. jane: i think you mentioned in your book that a lot of his assertions about rose writing the book were actually in the appendix. debunk it ort to did he fall into it later? caroline: it was kind of an odd presentation in some ways because he seemed to have some ural hostility towards la as part of the story and was very critical of her. and yet he did not bring up this thing that was such a central part of the book because the book was called "the ghost in

the little house" until the appendix when he did talk a little bit about it at the end. it was a contentious kind of an argument to make. i ultimately came away from it feeling like there was a lot more to the story and it was more complicated really. than that. , i'm noting your phd harvard many people at were studying laura ingalls wilder, where they? -- were they? caroline: i will tell you how many. there were zero. i did not even think of it at that time and i would never have proposed it. jane: it was not considered academic. 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? caroline: i later had the

opportunity to edit a new version of the little house books, a new edition for the libraries of america and that entailed writing some notes on the text explaining what certain historical events were for the reader and as i was doing that, i began to realize -- wow, this is really interesting. and it was really interesting to me so i began to help that it would potentially be interesting to readers as well. jane: how long did you study or what papers did you dig up -- where did you find actual new information that has not been written about much before? starting scholars were to do related work. --re is a fascinating people paper, for example, about the

that i family in kansas found. and there was another paper in ae folklore journal about discussion about the origins of this phrase that occurs repeatedly in little house on the prairie. phrase -- "the only good indian is a dead indian." and that was in use because of an event that is also mentioned in the book called the minnesota massacre. there is 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. like reallyseemed repaidstory that really

attention. jane: some of the papers are in the herbert hoover library as well? are those only rose's? caroline: both. jane: laura ingalls wilder's papers are in the herbert hoover library? caroline: yes. wasreason that came about because when rose began her writing career, and she really began as a yellow journalist, she was writing kind of questionable biographies of people. and she wrote one of herbert hoover. so she was actually the first person to write a biography of hoover before he became president. jane: and that was for adults. not for kids. anyway, after her

death, her papers ended up at the herb -- hoover presidential library as well as some of her mother's. jane: isn't that interesting? what were some of the revelations that you found? obviously, this book is one, the pulitzer prize -- people must have thought this was somewhat groundbreaking, the way you pulled it all together, all of this information and how it related to his great is why i assume it must have won? caroline: i think it was a combination of establishing the importance of wilder and her work. to both the literary history but also our self-image. as the we see ourselves

descendents of people who crossed the great plains. and were involved in settlement of the country. i think people are interested in the kinds of fantasies we have created about our own past. -- how looking at that true are those stories that we tell ourselves? other people were telling the story though before wilder, weren't they? oh sure, but i think her story had become one of the central ways that children especially white abouten, the ideas manifest destiny which is a concept that has been interrogated -- interrogated

quite a bit. youyet, even still today, hear politicians and other people kind of endorsing this idea that there was some grand plan. [laughter] a grand plan behind the whole idea of homesteading. that it has been known some of our presidents and presidential candidates have big fans of little house on the prairie. with --was that a subtle message on their part? or was that just what they were interested in? caroline: i think you are speaking of ronald reagan. who famously -- there is an anecdote about how he used to watch "little house on the prairie" in the white house with nancy. the cousin i think he knew michael landon who will of course was the star and producer and director of the tv show.

they were friends. and michael 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. maybees, i think there is a little bit of a message in that. that it was considered to be wholesome. jane: wholesome and hard-working. i guess and also pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, right? caroline: yes, the whole notion of -- i mean, reagan famously said -- he obviously did not support government. he said something famous -- if somebody comes to you and says -- i'm here from the government and i'm here to help -- jane: you're supposed to be

suspicious. caroline: that is the worst thing that you can hear. kernel of a slightly antigovernment -- jane: i wasn't going to bring that up until later but since we are talking about it -- i remember reading an essay in the new yorker by judith thurman. ,he person i was talking about the vice presidential candidate was sarah palin. it became associated with her. seem to wanturman to point out the idea that people are doing this all themselves and that laura ingalls wilder did it all herself. and that it was not entirely true. that she had had help. the government had given or load

them money to buy land. i assume you have read that essay. how did you react to that? what is your interpretation of how much help or not from the --ernment did the angles get ingalls debt? get? caroline: it is quite clear that had aherself contradictory reaction to the federal government. theuse, for a time in 1920's, she actually worked in a sense for the government. she was a loan officer, she was the secretary-treasurer for the mansfield, missouri federal farm loan program. so she helped farmers fill out to getrk and so forth

these loans which were beneficial for farmers. and she was very supportive of that program. deal camewhen the new along, she was very opposed to that. to people taking assistance or aid from the government. as many people were. many farmers were. it was not an unusual attitude to have, was it? i remember might own mother who was born in the 1920's and was part of a family of 10 -- i asked her when i was growing up why she did not like fdr and she said -- well because he made us feel like we were poor. theyy thought was that were poor. during the depression you were pretty poor. a kelly, a lot of people did not like to feel that and feel like

they were being told that. i don't know. caroline: yes, it is kind of a baffling thing. rosenk laura and certainly loved the idea of complete independence and autonomy. farmers andt that people should never take things from the government. that was shameful i think, to them. and yet, when you look at the history of the ingalls family, they did accept help. they accepted help, for example, for mary, lara's 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. and in fact, i think she really is the only member of the family that was able to go to college. so, there was clearly flexibility in the original ingalls family and for some laura, possibly because she was a little ashamed of some of her own reliance on her daughter financially, she developed a somewhat more rigid reaction. jane: when did she start writing or talking about that exactly -- more in the 1920's or 1930's? caroline: it really was the advent of fdr. you don't hear her talking about that before them. jane: tell us about charles ingalls.

he took advantage of the homestead act. what does that mean? how did that affect the family? and of course, the homestead act was one of the biggest government giveaways in history. and the family was fine with that. began, the homestead act was signed into law around 1862 by lincoln. it he takes advantage of first in minnesota. although they don't really develop the homestead there. it really becomes a factor in their lives when they move on to the dakota territories. the town where the ingalls family did help found. was, from thet beginning, a real struggle for them.

because it involved breaking land -- cutting up the prairie with a breaking plow which in itself i think was initially difficult work. to cut through all of the roots and tear off the grasses on the prairie. and why this time, he is older. jane: how old was he about? caroline: i would have to look but i think he was by that time in his late 30's. jane: late 30's and he had probably been working -- caroline: he had been working like a dog. it really took it out of him. and, they were able to have a butgood crops and so forth he was not 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. jane: he did not have any sons. die?hey had a boy, did he caroline: lara's 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. and, so, it was really a pretty tough life. jane: were they expected to pay back the government or prove the land -- make sure it was

producing or something before they could really keep it? caroline: the process of what they called proving up on the land took about five years. when you applied for the homestead, you filled out some paperwork and paid a small fee. a few box. i think it was $10 for a while and then a gradually went up. to clear a have certain number of acres and you had to build something. you had to build some kind of house orshanty or sod something to prove that was on the land. and at the end of the 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.

that you hadove done this and it had to be published in the local newspaper. that is why a lot of local newspapers were founded, was to publish this paperwork. jane: and publish announcements perhaps even from the government. caroline: sure. jane: but, to play devil's advocate here, they are not getting anything for free from the government because they are also doing the government a favor, aren't they? by moving west and helping to clear out the indians and create a farm. caroline: yes, although the utility of some of those farms is and was questionable. especially on the great plains in the dakotas, a lot of that farming.not ideal for

as specially what they called dryland farming which was just going alone without irrigation. just relying on whatever mother nature provided. marginal for was firming. and 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's scientists like john leslie powell said, 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. heedthey did not pay any

to that. jane: what was their motive and that, do you think? caroline: i think the motive was to help the railroad companies pursue their profits. really, ok. what about pa though? he loves laura. laura loves him. we saw him on tv. sounds like he was not a very good provider. laura do that. she admitted as much in a letter that she wrote to rose. she said something like -- 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. he was a his charm and

very affectionate and loving father. ad he was, i think, kind of very talented musician. his fiddle playing and violin playing was something that made lives worth-- their living even during the darkest dark, ofch were pretty the family. and so she came away from her relationship with him, i think, valuing him as a father even though he in a lot of ways failed as a provider. , that unusual or did he have a very short attention span or something? caroline: i think it was just kind of restlessness in one way. he loved to be moving on. he had an itch for it.

when anly disliked it area became too settled and overpopulated. he always wanted to keep going and moving on to the next place that was wilder. he wanted to kind of wander by forays.on these hunting thato i think it was just he was not supremely dedicated to the domestic firming scene. -- farming scene. wife what about his poor -- was she doing the lion's share of the work at home or what she resigned? poor caroline. caroline: i think she was resigned. but that was the thing, that was the lots of many women at the

time to hold down the fort. so i think she was a very person, very accepting in a lot of ways. and it seems though that she did finally put her foot down when said -- there and she this far and no further. this is edge. and i think she did that in part for the children. she wanted them to receive some kind of education. jane: and how much education did laura get? caroline: for the time, she got it pretty good. 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. for she was quite well read a person of her age. jane: how did she get books?

did they have a library there? aroline: they never had library while she was there and she would write later in life to schoolchildren and talk about how wonderful it was now that kids had access to libraries. but, they had a few books. they really valued literature. theink charles ingalls, for son of a farmer, was a very enjoyed man and he reading as did caroline ingalls. so i think reading at home was something they did all the time including reading aloud. jane: and he was a bit of a storyteller also. caroline: yes. had stories down at the hardware store, get the news from his pals, read the newspapers.

a great storyteller. 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've had quite an era. -- quite an ear. jane: how long did her parents live? when did he pass away? husband: laura and her and daughter ended up leaving the area in 1894 to come to the ozarks in missouri after a number of missed origins that they suffered. and that was actually the last time lara would see her father until he was on his deathbed in 1902. jane: about eight years? was not: yes, so she able to see him or be with him until the very end. , i think he was 63 or something like that. live on for ingalls

some time. she and mary lived together. in caroline ingalls died 1924i think and mary in 1928. jane: that is before laura made it big, right? before she published her first book because laura does not really start writing the books until the 1930's. caroline: she wrote first an autobiography which was not published during her life, around 1930. jane: "pioneer girl." caroline: and it was recently published by the south dakota historical society. beautifully produced. jane: and they put in a lot of historical information as well.

--t, her other sister's car carrie and grace. they did not and up as well as the wilder family. they had struggles until the end. caroline: they were quite poor. enterprising young journalist for a while. she worked for some newspapers. in ended up marrying a miner the keystone area. and grace got married to a fellow not far away from the area in a little town called manchester. but they were very poor. and grace had some health problems all her life. jane: did laura ever give them money, do you think? caroline:problems all her life. it is unclear. i don't think she ever helped support them. i do think in later years,

during the depression, she may have given them some clothing and other things. but, i don't think she really financially help support them. helped support them. jane: how was laura's marriage to almonzo? caroline: they had a terrible time -- right after they got married, they were heavily in debt. they lost all of these crops. and then, they fell ill with diphtheria, a very serious illness at the time with no treatment for it. and he suffered a stroke while he was recovering from the diphtheria which was -- the effects -- jane: he was young. caroline: yes, he was a young

and vital man and after the stroke he had difficulty walking for the rest of his life. 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 could not do the kind of hard labor that he had done. jane: they came to missouri. i think there was something about apples? caroline: the land of the big red apples was how the railroad advertised of the ozarks and especially the area where the wilders ended up moving. near mansfield. railroad, aunts, it was to some extent a fantasy but they were -- but there were many orchards and that was something they did do with their property outside of

mansfield. they planted 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. the: we don't think of ozarks or at least i don't as great farmland either. i mean, it is pretty rocky. caroline: [laughter] nows an you talk to people there and almost all of them have stories about rock picking. somebody would pay them $.50 to pick up rocks in their field. ofky ridge was the name their farm. and i don't think it was ever oatsy -- i think they grew , stuff for their livestock. they did have quite a lot of livestock. jane: she was really proud of her chickens. caroline: yes, she was very skilled with poultry and

developed all of these ways to keep chickens productive and healthy. boon to thema huge and one of the things she began writing about for newspapers was poultry and had to be successful. she sort of -- she was very distressed that almonzo was dismissive about what she made off of the poultry so she sat down and added up all of the money she was making and proved to him that it was worthwhile. jane: what paid the bills before she -- before the book sold? caroline: they had all kinds of jobs. when they first went there, almonzo was helping to deliver freight from the train depot. they worked for an oil company. she did the books for the

company. and they took in borders -- boarders. she had quite a little business doing that for a while and then various other little businesses came along. she had the farm loan work and at the same time she was writing for newspapers. she wrote for the missouri were list. --ruralist. a well-respected newspaper. that is where she served her apprenticeship. she wrote about her family, her father, her sister. jane: she wrote about them and people always like family stories, in general. but how did she get that job, do you know? how did she get started? caroline: she and rose kind of came up together. they had this famous trip -- laura took a trip in 1915 to visit her daughter rose who was

at that time living in san francisco. she married this ne'er-do-well guy who was living in san francisco. , of course,cisco was a kind of hotbed of yellow journalism at the time. so there were a lot of papers. they were publishing a lot. she started working on one of the women's pages of the san francisco bulletin. she wrote fiction and some nonfiction that actually was fiction. [laughter] at the same time, she is telling her mother -- look, you can make so much more money writing for a newspaper and you can with chickens. and so stop doing that. jane: and build the case. [laughter] caroline so, that was how she

got into it and lara apprenticed herself to her daughter for a while and then she was on her way. gig was quite a lucky break for her because they really value to her. she was there woman columnist for a long time. jane: do we know how much he was paid for doing that? caroline: i don't think we know. jane: do you want to talk more about rose? she was a character. and she contributes quite a bit she also sounds a little unsteady to me. a little moody at the very least. a harde: yes, rose had life in some ways. from a young child, she had a lot of trauma in her life because of all the things that happened. her parents' illness and her

father's disability. that she another child did not even remember for a long time. and the house burned down. had builtthat almonzo for his wife. and so i think a lot of that left her with all of these confused feelings of responsibility. and, so as an adult, you can kind of see all of this trauma playing out in her life and she certainly did get severely depressed at various periods and suicidal at times. anddid seem to suffer a lot her relationship with her mother was pretty rocky also. jane: they had a lot of back and forth. but they must have also supported each other because

didn't she helped send her mother's first manuscript to a publisher and coached her through what to do? caroline: yes, and i often say that we would not have the little house books if it were not for rose. because rose had a lot of experiences 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. she had been hearing about the stories about the pioneering days all of her life. and she knew there was some money to be made off of that. that there was a real market for that. jane: and possibly, i don't know, but the fact that the

country was becoming more modern made people more nostalgic and more interested in those older stories, i assume. definitely. and you can really see that kicking and during the depression. stories in "farmer boy" which were about almonzo's childhood were obviously really appealing to a public that doesn't know where their next meal is coming from. and the stories about wonderful farms and these amazing meals that they use to repair. "farmer boy" is full of accounts of eating pie for breakfast. was kind of wonderful nostalgia for a time of plenty during a time when people were desperate. jane: how did -- 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 for oura tv series history lessons but a lot of people watched that show. so they probably got -- they probably got an idea that this was how it was. what were some of the things that it got wrong? caroline: the tv show? more or less everything. jane: really? caroline: i think the tv show was so made up out of whole cloth. if you look at it now, it really was more about the 1970's then it was about the 1870's. and this was true of almost everything coming out of hollywood. it is not like that was unusual. westerns and so forth are notoriously fantasies of what

life was supposed to be like. so, but yes, the way that charles ingalls was portrayed for example by michael landon -- i have a picture in my slideshow of michael landon with his shirt off and his chest shaved -- jane: that was not pa, huh? was probably not happening a lot on the prairie unthinking. i could give you a million examples. wrotei think you also that they did not wear shoes to walk around or go to town or to go to school. but michael landon didn't want -- landon reallyael emphasized the success of the shoes so his kids wore and they had toys that the real

ingalls girls would have coveted and would've loved to have had. jane: i don't 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 or trade in the book? , there is some mixed sort of messages there it seems. aware of just i'm a handful of instances -- especially one episode of the tv show that showed what was meant laura's indian boy and interaction with him. these were that michael landon who apparently also repurposed a lot of bonanza episodes.

jane: did he? a lot of bonanza plots? caroline: i think they did not have a lot to do with historical reality or even wilder's own which came through little house on the prairie which she anded her indian novel which does portray a number of encounters that she and her family had with indians and kansas. which today, when we read them, they are problematic. and there is a certain amount of racist language and attitudes on display in that novel. but, it is not laura necessarily who shows those, is it? her mother is quite afraid of indians. caroline: her mother, certainly, and a number of times when she

uses this inflammatory language, it is given to another character. it is not something that laura is saying or her father is saying. in fact, her father disagrees with it vocally. i think, nonetheless, there are attitudes and expressions of how ndn's see and interpret and indian behavior that would never be published today. it is interesting to look at that novel as an expression of that time. remains one of her most important novels. i do think you have to understand it in its historical context. jane: it really is a page turner, that book. there is always stuff happening

-- there are wolves and indians. a lot of stuff. as you know, the american library association a couple of years ago renamed what was the laura ingalls wilder award in part because of this concern over the portrait of the indians, right? how do you feel about that? do you think it was necessary? caroline: i think it was necessary for them because that to do. they decided and i understand why they did it. they were the institution that developed the award. they owned it to do. and i understand why they did it. . they had the right to change the name of it. it. they did not withdraw they did not withdraw it from wild or herself who was the first recipient of it. and they made a very public they hope toing children and adults would continue to read the books.

so, it was not intended as an act of censorship. although i think the general public somehow interpreted it, in some quarters, as that which i think is too bad because that was not the intent. jane: but they still have a award.e guyeisel and he was more explicitly anti-semitic then laura was in her novels. caroline: right. published during the period of the second world war, a number of racist images. so, it is complicated. i mean, they actually had a different set of problems with that award based on how it was set up. the arrangement with the family. i don't know the full story

behind that but i think there is some complications involved with that. as wilder is concerned, it had been something they had been discussing for years. i know librarians have been concerned about it because there had been children in communities in south dakota and in other states in the planes and -- in the plains and the west who had actually come home from school in tears because they had been reading "little house on the prairie" and had read these kinds of inflammatory things. so i think it was a recognition that some of the books had portrayals of indians were complex and disturbing.

and that has to be acknowledged. there has to be context provided for these books if they are going to continue to be taught in school. jane: how does that compare to say other sort of classic children's books? mean, would one of them pass the test -- caroline: and there have been many instances of this. my mother was a kindergarten teacher and taught first grade. and i remember her distress when she had to stop reading "little black sambo" to kids. so this is something that has been happening and people reevaluate classics all the time. and begin either withdrawing -- ifrom young children

mean, i think the issue is children. it is particularly notable and disturbing when it is children who are the audience. for these works. and i think, for adults, it is a totally different situation. people are still reading and "iscussing "huckleberry finn for example. in literature courses. but those are adults. and it is a different set of standards i think. jane: hopefully, they have more knowledge to put things in context i would assume. caroline: sure. jane: would you have them maybe edit or change anything now in the little house books to make that go away? caroline: no, i am never a fan of -- and i don't think it is

necessary and i don't think it solves a problem. either you just need to reconsider who is reading the books and at what age. -- and at what age they are when they read the books and provide context. or -- i'm not an educator. i'm not somebody that has those kinds of skills. but, i just think it is an issue -- all of literature from previous periods. thinkwhich by the way, i when my children were young there was a new picture book that came out that was like "little black sambo." it had different illustrations that were more respectful. and it was a darling little book. to my daughter a lot. i can't remember what the name

of it is right now but they called him something slightly different but i think it was based on that. but it had been re-illustrated so it told the story more respectfully. anyway. fort is probably about time other people to think of some questions. there are microphones over here and you will have to get up to go to them because they do not roam around the room. 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? caroline: i have always really ." ed "the long winter

it is her novel about the family's survival of this 1880-1881.winter of and it describes how the ingalls family was basically kind of trapped in their house. for months at a time. dwindled and dwindled. they were down to their last sack of potatoes i think. when this young man named almonzo 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 and find the wheat. and this of course all happened and it is beautifully written. it is an extraordinary survival tale.

evocative oft very the kind of terror and numbness that overtakes you. you are subjected to these kinds of conditions. and then of course, it all comes right in the end through this act of heroism by the man she eventually marries. so it is a wonderful novel. for there they happy rest of their lives, do you think? i do think that they were. i think their marriage was difficult in the ways that many marriages are. powerad sometimes real struggles. i think laura was a really forceful person. she had a hot temper. she would often fly off the handle. i think she was quite quick to anger and she knew this about herself and regretted it but

nonetheless -- and yet come he was very patient with her. say -- i think later in life that he knew that about her when he married her. kind think he admired her of fire and her fiery personality. and i do think they loved each other deeply. i don't think it was always easy though for them. jane: do you have a favorite little house site? pilgrimages to different locations. do you have a favorite? caroline: there is something wonderful at all of them up one of my favorites is plum creek site. the town of on the growth is quite interesting in itself and there is a lot there but there is an area where the family dugout was right next to plum

creek. and you can see -- you can still see the depressions in the earth where the dugout must have at one point. and it is such a lovely place. the owners of the house really preserved the character of it. so you can kind of see the penn taken a little bit of the character of the land. it is just a beautiful little spot. >> would you talk a little bit about laura's situation with her sister mary? ms. fraser: that was a critical part of her life, i think. obviously the two sisters, mary and laura, had a kind of competition. they were very competitive with each other. and when they were younger they were much more pious and proper and a little bit prim, which was

something that laura always resented. and i think that is true. i think this was the difference between them. and then when mary fell ill and nearly died and then became blind, laura was then really kind of forced into this role that she had never contemplated for herself, which was to become a teacher. that is 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 she really could do something that she did not want

to do. she was never comfortable 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. ms. henderson: she was a small person. wasn't she just under 5 feet or something? ms. fraser: she was just 5 feet. so 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 some of those little childhood resentments stayed with her, too. she would describe such feeling later in life that it was clear -- i think it created her love of fairness and her intolerance

of injustice. she was very quick to be angry about things that she felt to be an injustice. i think it came from her competition with mary. >> hi. i have really enjoyed your talk so far. i had a couple questions but i will do the one. i know you said you loved the books. how did you get into researching like you did? because most people you read books, you love the books, and you don't go as far as you have where you have researched these people for years. so what led you to do what you have done? ms. fraser: to me, the

historical background of the ingalls' lives were really fascinating. the more i got into that the more i wanted to find out. it was more like putting together a puzzle or something. there were all these missing pieces that i wanted to find the answers to. so, i think that was a big part of it. but you had mentioned earlier that nobody at harvard would have studied something like this. i did feel there was importance to these books, that they really deserved attention and explication and analysis in a way that they had not. not that there are not 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 it is fine to not be a fan of the little house books as well. there are a lot of people who do not like them, which i completely understand. and i think that is totally legitimate. but i do think they are important. i think they help shape our ideas about some settings, about our history with farming and settlements, that we need to know more about those things. did you have another question?

>> i know someone else's coming up, but how did it feel about how bulger big is? how does it make an author feel knowing it is huge? i am just curious what authors think of that. ms. fraser: it is enormously gratifying to get a response to your work, because of course most writers, and most certainly i have spent years by myself in a room not talking to anyone. so it is wonderful to have readers and to meet readers and to hear their responses and their enthusiasm for the topic. >> were you surprised when you won the pulitzer? ms. fraser: i was shocked. deeply, deeply shocked, yes. very surprised. >> 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? ms. fraser: no. carrie, 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, she adopted several young people in a kind of temporary way. and one of those people eventually became the inheritor of the estate, a fellow named roger mcbride who she met when he was the 14-year-old son of her editor at reader's digest. and he became her adopted grandson and inherited the estate when she died.

>> thank you. >> i have a comment and a question. my favorite was always a long winter, and my view is certainly colored now having read about that lazy couple 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, like, charles was never fond of war. it seems to me from the book that when the draft came he just sort of disappeared for a year. is that kind of -- ms. fraser: yeah, that is a very interesting period, and it remains, i think, an unanswered question why he did not serve. there was some history there.

the ingalls, charles and caroline, married in 1860. she had a brother who died. in the war. i am 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 wisconsin. and that was an area where a lot of men 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 a contentious subject in wisconsin, although i think the state of wisconsin, they sent more men to fight in the war than almost any other state.

so, it is tantalizing and interesting to think about what that might have been like, and why none of the ingalls's boys, except the two youngest who ended up volunteering very late in the war, why none of them served. ms. henderson: that is very interesting. in mansfield, roger mcbride, he

kind of took over the royalties of the little house books. wasn't the main field public library supposed to get them later, but they never did? they got a lump settlement. ms. fraser: right. laura's will did leave the county library the proceeds, the royalties. she left them all to rose for rose's lifetime, but when rose died it was supposed to go to the library. and he engaged in 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 a fairly substantial sum. so, yeah, it was a little shady.

ms. henderson: a question? >> i am not american, but "little house on the prairie," that series was a benchmark in my family. can i request something? because i believe that the majority of the people in here are a big fan of you. so, can i -- i mean, can we take a photograph at the end? [laughter] ms. henderson: well, she was going to sign, but there are no books to sign. ms. fraser: no, i would be happy to. >> thank you. ms. henderson: that is really cute. do we have any other questions? because i could keep asking questions all night long. but i don't know. pam?

>> you kind of mentioned this at the beginning, and one author brought up that rose really was the author of the books. and i read the annotated bibliography. it 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. it was more like rose was her editor than the author, so for me it will always be laura ingalls wilder's books. ms. fraser: yeah, they definitely had a collaboration, is what people often call it. i think it was kind of mother, daughter, writer, editor collaboration. but rose contributed a lot, and 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 do not think we are done with that, even today. and there are certain stages of the manuscript that appear to be missing. so, it really does show you a and i do not think we are done lot about their process when you look at what remains. i think 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 in her columns to the writing in the novels, and tell, is there any substantial difference in the tone or in the language she uses or her style of writing?

ms. fraser: 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 did not contribute to it at all. she gave a famous speech at the detroit book fair about why she had written the books. she was only halfway through at that point. but i think that you can tell that she had her own voice, she had her own style, which was very different than rose's. she had a very plainspoken, not melodramatic, very factual and kind of affecting tone, whereas

rose's contributions are much more hyper-dramatic and more polished sometimes. so it is possible to discern the different voices. and i think a lot of what makes the little house books unique is laura's 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? ms. fraser: i think what is 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 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 period of kind of financial collapse and homelessness and drifting around.

so, a lot of how she's changing her stories, leaving things out that she did not want to write about that she thought were not appropriate for children. >> and the second question, regarding her estate. is any part of her estate used to maintain the various sites, like mansfield and plum creek. ms. fraser: not directly, to my knowledge. i know that roger mcbride did give generously to some of the sites, including mansfield. i think he was instrumental in helping them set up a museum.

i think he also contributed items from rose's possessions. i know they have some of her furniture and other materials, things that he had. i don't know whether he set up any kind of permanent bequest, but i know that he did give them. i think many of them, though, struggle for funding. and it is too bad that there is not a kind of national support for those sites. like a lot of literary sites, they really do need help.

ms. henderson: didn't mansfield have plans to build another building or something? ms. fraser: they did. it opened a couple years ago. they have a new museum now. ms. henderson: any other questions? we will just wrap it up then. thank you all so much for coming. let's give a round of applause. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] each weekend we have programs

exploring our nation's past. announcer: the 6888 central postal battalion was the only all-female african-american unit sent overseas during world war ii. next, veterans of that unit share memories of their service, processing millions of pieces of backlogged mail for troops. they spoke at the annual conference in washington dc. the first female african-american graduate of the military academy moderates. >> a young american stood in front of number 10 downing street in the mid-1950's is an old man with a cigar came out the door. the young american turned and said mr. prime minister, tell us the secret of your success.