9/11. and now caroline fraser talks about laura ingals wilder. the jefferson county, missouri library hosted this event.

my job tonight is to introduce the two people on the podium who will be conducting this conversation. she grew up in st. louis and graduated from the university of missouri columbia with degrees in journalism and english literature. she cut short her time as a grad student to go to work in the mid 1980s. jane henderson is the book editor at the st. louis post after three years in the newsroom in connecticut, she returned to st. louis and has been an editor and writer with the post dispatch features

department for 30 years. she assigns and edits book reviews choosing from 300 or so new books each week. tonight she will be having a conversation with caroline frazier. caroline frazier is the editor of the library america edition of laura ingalls wilder, the little house books. her latest book is "prairie fires, the american dreams of laura ingalls wilder." it was one of the "new york times" ten best books of the year and won the 2018 pulitzer prize for biography. the national book critics circle award for biography and the bio internationals 2018 plutarch award.

carolyn frazier has traveled the country for the past two years giving talks on laura ingalls wilder, her daughter rose wilder lane and other topics to groups large and small at schools, mick libraries, conferences and universities. formally on the staff of the new yorker, carolyn frazier's articles have appears in the new york review of books, the atlantic, the los angeles times book review and the london review of books among other publications. she is also the author of "god's perfect child, living and dying in the christian science church" and dispatches from the conservation revolution. she was born in seattle, washington. in 1979, she graduated from mercer island high school. in 1987 she received her phd in english and american literature from harvard. she lives with her husband in santa fe, new mexico. we would like you all to give her a very warm welcome tonight.

[ applause ] >> i guess we're on. are you ready for us to go ahead? are you going to talk? >> thank you very much for having me and asking me to talk to carolyn frazier. it's really exciting. i think that probably most of us read "little house on the prairie" books when we were young and watched it on tv. i was getting to be a teenager at the time and sometimes was a little skeptical and thought it was a little corny. we'll get back to that later. how long have you researched and studied and why did you start studying laura ingalls wilder? >> well, i discovered the books as a kid too and read them and

loved them and thought they were fantastic. i think part of the reason i really loved them was because my grandmother and most of my grand parents had been farmers in the midwest. they were all immigrants mainly from scandinavian places and came to minnesota and wisconsin and were farming in the late 1890s in some of the same places, same areas that laura ingalls had lived. so i think it was really fascinating to me to discover these books that told stories that cast some light on what they must have gone through. and then as an adult, i had an opportunity to review the first biography of rose wilder lane, laura ingalls wilder's daughter, who was at one time a pretty well known journalist.

and in the '90s, a biography of her appeared and it was quite a scandal, actually, because it claimed that she was really the author. >> that was william holts. he was from the university of missouri, right? >> yeah. he taught at the university of missouri. it created quite a sensation. there were lots of headlines like little fraud on the prairie. >> right, right, right. >> so i reviewed that book. that's when i started looking at wilder's manuscripts and kind of thinking about what an interesting story that was. >> her life? >> yes.

>> i think you mention in your book that a lot of his assertions about rose writing the books actually is in the appendix, right? did he set out, do you think, to debunk it, or did he just somehow fall into that later? >> yeah. it was kind of an odd presentation in some ways because he seemed to have some real hostility towards laura as part of the story. i was very critical of her. yet he didn't bring up this thing that was a central part of the book. his book was called "the ghost in the little house" until really the appendix when he talks about it a little bit at the end. so it was a contentious kind of argument to make. i ultimately came away from it feeling like there was a lot more to the story and that it was more complicated really.

>> than that. >> than that. >> but when you earned your phd, i'm not sure how many people at harvard were studying laura ingalls wilder, were they? >> i'll tell you exactly how many. there were zero. and i didn't even think of it at that time. but i would never have proposed it because it was just not considered -- >> it wasn't considered academic, i would assume. >> yeah. >> but you kind of have made it academic in a way with your book, because you do incorporate so much history into the story, right? >> yeah. i mean, i later had the opportunity to edit a new version of the little house

books, a new edition for the library of america. that entailed writing some notes on the text explaining what certain historical events were for the reader. as i was doing that, i began to realize, you know, this stuff is really interesting. it's really interesting to me. so i began to hope that it would be potentially interesting to readers as well. >> and so how long did you study or what papers did you dig up? where did you find actual new information that hadn't been written about much before? >> well, scholars were starting to do, you know, related work. i mean, there's a fascinating

paper, for example, about the ingalls family in kansas that i found. and there was another paper in a folklore journal about a discussion of the origins of this phrase that occurs repeatedly in "little house on the prairie," the scurrilous phrase, the only good indian is a dead indian. that was in use -- >> at the time. >> -- because of an event that is also mentioned in the book called the minnesota massacre. so there was a whole history just about that one phrase that was so fascinating in terms of how that was used politically to justify the treatment of indians. so it seemed like a really rich history that really paid attention.

>> some of the papers are in the herbert hoover library too? are those rose's only, her papers? >> both. >> laura ingalls wilder's papers are in the herbert hoover library? >> yes. it's unusual, but the reason that came about was because when rose began her writing career -- and she really began as a yellow journalist -- she was writing these kind of questionable biographies of people. and she wrote one of herbert hoover. she was actually the first person to write a biography of hoover before he became president. >> and that was for adults? >> yes.

>> it wasn't for kids? >> yes. but it was actually fictionalized. >> right. >> anyway, after her death, her papers ended up at the hoover presidential library as well as some of her mother's. >> isn't that interesting. so what were some of the revelations that you found? i mean, obviously this book has won the pulitzer prize. people must have thought it was somewhat groundbreaking the way you pulled it together, all this information and how it related to history, i assume is why it won. >> i think it was a combination of establishing the importance of wilder and her work to both our literary history, but also our self image, the way that we see ourselves as the descendents of people who crossed the great plains and were involved in the settlement of the country.

i think people are interested in the kind of fantasies that we've created about our own past and sort of looking at how true are those stories that we tell ourselves. >> well, other people were telling that story, though, before wilder, weren't they? >> oh sure, but i think that her story has become one of the central ways that children absorb, especially white children, the ideas about manifest destiny, which that's a concept that has been interrogated quite a bit and yet even still today you hear politicians and other people kind of endorsing this idea that there was some grand plan for behind the whole idea of homesteading and so forth. >> it's been known that some of our presidents and presidential candidates have been big fans of

"little house on the prairie." so was that a subtle message on their part, or was that just that that's what they were interested in? >> well, i think you're speaking about ronald reagan, who famously there was this anecdote about how he used to watch "little house on the prairie" in the white house with nancy, because i think he knew michael landon, who of course was the star and producer and director of the tv show.

they were friends and landon was a big reagan supporter. i doubt very much whether reagan himself had read the books or kind of had that sort of knowledge of the background of them. but yeah, i think there is maybe a little bit of a message in that, you know, that it was considered to be wholesome. >> wholesome and hard working. i guess an also kind of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, right? >> right. that whole notion of -- i mean, reagan famously said that, i mean, he obviously didn't

support government. he said something famous about, you know, if somebody comes to you and says i'm here from the government and i'm here to help, you know -- >> you're supposed to be

suspicious. >> yes, that that's like the worst thing you can hear. so there is a kind of kernel in the books of this sort of slightly anti-government. >> well, i wasn't going to actually bring that up until a little later, but since we're talking about it, i remember

reading an essay in the new yorker a few years ago, judith thurman, who -- the person i was talking about the presidential candidate, vice presidential candidate was sarah palin. it became associated with her. and judith thurman seemed to want to point out this idea that people are doing this all themselves and that laura ingalls wilder did it all herself wasn't entirely true, that she had had help, that the government had given or loaned them money to buy land, et cetera. i assume you've read that essay. >> mm-hm. >> how did you react to that and what is your interpretation of how much help or not from the government did the ingalls get? >> yes. it's quite clear, actually, that

laura herself had a really sort of contradictory reaction to the federal government because for a time in the 1920s she actually worked in a sense for the government. she was the secretary treasurer for the mansfield, missouri, federal farm loan program. so she helped farmers fill out paperwork and so forth to get these loans, which were beneficial for farmers. and she was very supportive of that program. but then when the new deal came

along, she was very opposed to that. she was opposed to people taking assistance or aid from the government, as many people were, many farmers were. >> it wasn't an unusual attitude to have, was it? >> no. >> i remember my own mother, who was born in the '20s and was one of a family of ten. i said why don't you like fdr or something? she said, because he made us feel poor. well, you were poor. during the depression with ten kids in the family, you were pretty poor. apparently a lot of people didn't like either to feel that or to feel like they were being told that. i don't know. >> yeah. it's kind of a baffling thing, because i think laura and certainly rose loved this idea of complete independence and autonomy and they felt that, you know, farmers and people should never take things from the government. that was shameful, i think, to them. and yet, you know, when you look at the history of the ingalls family, they did accept help. they accepted help, for example, for mary, laura'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. in fact, i think she's really the only member of the family that was able, you know, to go to college. so there was clearly flexibility

in the original ingalls family. and for some reason i think that laura possibility because she was a little ashamed of some of her own reliance on her daughter financially developed a somewhat more rigid reaction. >> but when did she start writing or talking about that exactly? was it more like in the '20s and '30s? >> it was really with the advent of fdr. you don't see laura talking about it before then. >> tell us about charles ingalls. he took advantage of the homestead act, right? >> mm-hm. >> so what did that mean? i mean, how did that affect the family? >> well, and of course the homestead act was one of the biggest government give-aways in history and the family was fine with that. he began -- you know, i mean, the homestead act is signed into law around 1862 by lincoln. and he takes advantage of it first in minnesota, although they don't really develop a homestead there. it really becomes a factor in their lives when they move onto the dakota territory, the town which the ingalls family did help found. i think it was from the beginning a real struggle for them, because it involved breaking land, you know, which cutting up the prairie with a

breaking plough, which i think is fiendishly difficult work to cut through all the roots and tear off the grasses on the prairie. i think he really -- by this time, he's an older -- >> how old was he about? >> i'd have to look, but i think he was probably by that time in his, you know, late 30s, 40. >> and he'd probably been working -- >> yes. and he'd be working like a dog all his life. >> right. >> yeah. i think it really took it out of him. they were able to, you know, have a few good crops and so forth, but he wasn't really supporting the family just with the homestead. he had to go into town and build houses. he actually worked mainly as a carpenter in his later years. so it kind of shows you how tough that was. i think it was easier for big families who had a lot of sons who could help out. >> and he didn't have any sons, right? >> sadly --

>> they had a boy. did he die? >> yes. laura'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. so it was a really pretty tough life. >> were they expected to pay back the government or prove the land, make sure that it was producing or something before they could really keep it? >> yeah. the process of what they called proving up on the land took about five years. when you applied for a homestead, you filled out some paperwork and you paid a small

fee, you know, a few bucks. i think it was $10 for a while and then it gradually went up. and you did have to clear a certain number of acres and you had to build something. you had to build some kind of house or shanty or sod house or something. you had to prove that that was on the land. and you had to at the end of this process, at the end of five years, you had to get some friends or neighbors to help you fill out the paperwork and testify to this. you know, you had to prove that you had done this. and that had to be published in the local newspaper. that's why a lot of local newspapers were founded, was to publish that paperwork. >> also probably to publish announcements perhaps even from the government and land sales. >> sure. >> but to play devil's advocate

here, they're not getting anything really for free from the government because they're also doing the government a favor, aren't they, by moving west and kind of helping clear out the indians and create a farm? >> yeah. although the utility of some of those farms is and was questionable because especially on the great plains, in the dakotas, a lot of that land was not ideal for farming, especially what they called dry land farming, which was just going alone without irrigation, just relying on whatever mother nature provided. so that land was marginal for farming. the government actually knew that when it participated in sending people out there or

allowing the railroads to send people out there. because the government scientists like john wesley powell had basically told them, look, this is better for grazing than it is for farming and you actually need a lot more of it to be successful. you need a lot more than the traditional 160 acres that the homestead act provided to make a go of it. but they did not pay any heed to that. >> so what was their motive in that, do you think? >> i believe the motive was to help the railroad companies pursue their profits. >> oh really? okay. so what about pa, though? i mean, we love pa, right? >> we do. >> because he loves laura. laura loves him. you know, we saw him on tv.

but he sounds like he wasn't a very good, you know, provider. >> and laura knew that. you know, she admitted as much in a letter that she wrote to rose. she said something like, you know, pa was no farmer, he was no businessman, he was a poet and a musician. and i think she loved him for those qualities that were not that practical. she loved his charm and his -- he was very affectionate and loving father and he was, i think, a kind of very talented musician. i think his fiddle playing was something that made their lives worth living, you know, even during the darkest hours which were pretty dark of the family.

and so, you know, she came away from her relationship with him, i think, valuing him as a father even though he had in a lot of ways failed as a provider. >> right. was that unusual or did he have like a very short attention span or something? >> i think it was just kind of restlessness in one way. he loved to kind of be moving on. he had an itchy foot, you know. he clearly disliked it when an area became too settled and overpopulated. he always wanted to keep going and moving onto the next place that was wilder. he loved to kind of wander by himself on these hunting forays. so i think it was just that he

was not supremely dedicated to the domestic farming scene. >> well, what about his poor wife? i mean, was she doing the lion's share of the work at home? poor carolyn. she sounds a little resigned. >> well, i think in some ways she was, although that was the thing. >> common, yeah. >> that was the lot of many women at the time to hold down the fort. so i think that she was a very patient, very accepting person in a lot of ways. it seems though that she did finally put her foot down when they got to dismat and said no further. i think she did that in part for the children that she wanted them to receive some kind of education. >> how much education did laura get? >> for the time, she got pretty good.

i mean, she never actually graduated from what they called high school then, because she left to become a teacher herself. and i think she always felt a little badly about that. but she was quite well read for a person of her age. >> how did she get books? did they have a library there? >> they never had a library while she was there. she would write later in life to school children and talk about how wonderful it was now that kids had access to libraries. but they had a few books. you know, they really valued literature. i think charles ingalls for the son of farmers was a very literate man and he enjoyed reading and so did caroline ingalls. so i think reading at home was something they did all the time, reading aloud. >> he was a bit of a story

teller too, wasn't he? >> oh yes. and i think he would hear stories down at the hardware store. he'd sit around with his pals and get the news and love to read newspapers and was a great story teller. she always said that once he had heard a tune played on the fiddle, that he would always remember it and could reproduce it. so he must have had quite an ear. >> and how long would her parents live? when did he pass away?

>> well, laura and her husband and daughter ended up leaving dismat in 1894 to come to the ozarks in missouri after a number of misfortunes that they suffered. and that was actually the last time that laura would see her father until he was on his death bed in 1902. >> so about eight years? >> yeah. so she did not -- she was not able to see him or be with him until the very end. he died, you know, in his -- i think he was 63 or something like that.

caroline ingalls lived on for some time in dismat. she and mary lived together and caroline ingalls died in 1924, i think and mary in 1928. >> that's before laura made it big, right, before laura published her first book? >> right, because laura doesn't really start writing the books until the '30s. she writes first an autobiography that was not published during her life around 1930. >> "pioneer girl" is that it? >> yes. it's recently been published by the south dakota historical society. >> right. and it's well annotated, as i remember. >> yes. it's beautifully produced and annotated. >> they put a lot of historical information in that too, i think. >> yes. >> but her other sisters, carrie

and grace, they didn't end up as well as the wilder family, right? they still had some struggles to the end or -- >> yeah. you know, they were quite poor. carrie was a kind of enterprising young journalist for a while. she worked for some newspapers and ended up marrying a miner in the keystone area. and grace got married to a fellow not far away from dismat in a little town called manchester. but they were very poor. and grace had some health problems all her life. >> did laura ever give them money, do you think? >> it's unclear.

i don't think she ever really helped support them. i do think in later years during the depression, she may have given them some clothes and other things. but i don't think that she really financially helped support them. >> how was laura's marriage to almonzo? >> yes. they had a terrible time right after they got married, they were heavily in debt and lost all these crops. and then they fell ill with diphtheria which is a very serious illness at the time, no treatment for it. and he suffered a stroke while he was recovering from the diphtheria, which would last -- you know, the effects -- >> he was young when he had the stroke or relatively young. >> yes. he was a young vital man and after the stroke he had difficulty walking really for the rest of his life. i mean, he could walk and he could work. he worked very hard, i think.

but i think it was a real struggle physically for him and he couldn't do the kind of hard labor that he'd done. >> so they came to missouri. i think that was something about apples. >> the land of the big red apples. that was how the railroad advertised the ozarks and especially the area where the wilders ended up moving around mansfield. like all railroad come-ons it was to some extent a bit of a fantasy. but there were orchards and so forth that were being established. that was actually one of the things they did with their property outside of mansfield,

is to plant a lot of apple trees that were pretty successful for a while. i think a lot of that was wiped out during the dust bowl years, sadly. >> i mean, we don't think of the ozarks or at least i don't as great farmland either. i mean, it's pretty rocky. >> it is. you talk to people there now and almost all of them have stories about rock picking that somebody would pay them 50 cents to go pick up rocks in their fields. so rocky ridge was the name of their farm. i don't think it was ever, you know, hugely -- i think they grew oats, they grew stuff for their livestock. they did have quite a lot of livestock at one point. >> she was really proud of her chickens. >> yes. she was very skilled with poultry and developed all these ways to keep chickens productive

and healthy. that was a huge boon to them. and one of the things that she began writing about for newspapers was poultry and how to be successful. she was very distressed that almonzo was kind of dismissive of the money she made off of poultry. so she sat down and added up all the money she was making and proved to him -- >> that it was worthwhile. >> yeah. >> what paid the bills before she the book sold? what paid the bills mostly? >> oh, they had all kinds of jobs. when they first went there, almanzo was helping deliver freight from the train depo. she worked for an oil company doing the books. and they took in borders. she had quite a little business doing that for a while. then these various other things came along.

she had the farm loan work. and at that same time she was also starting to write for newspapers. she wrote for the missouri ruralist, a very well known and well respected farm newspaper. that's really where she kind of serves her apprenticeship as a writer and started writing about her family, her father, her sister mary. >> oh she did, she wrote about them. >> mm-hm. >> and people always liked family stories in general, but how did she get that job, do you know? >> yeah.

well, she and rose kind of came up together. you know, they had this famous trip -- laura took a trip in 1915 to visit her daughter rose who at that time was living in san francisco. she'd married this kind of never do well guy in san francisco. san francisco, of course, was a kind of hot bed of yellow journalism at the time. she started working on one of the women's pages of the san francisco bulletin, wrote fiction and some nonfiction that actually was fiction. at the same time she's telling her mother, look, you can make so much more money writing for a newspaper than you can with chickens, you know. so stop doing that. >> oh yeah, we know that's still the case. >> so that was how they got into it. laura kind of apprenticed herself to her daughter for a while. then she was on her way.

and the ruralist gig was quite a lucky break for her, because they really valued her. you know, she was sort of their woman columnist for a long time. >> do we know how much she was paid for those? >> i don't think we do. >> do you want to talk more about rose? because rose is a character and, you know, she contributes quite a bit in the book, but she also sounds a little unsteady to me, a little moody at the very least. >> yeah. yeah, rose had a hard life in some ways. you know, from a young child she had a lot of trauma in her life because of all those things that happened, her parents' illness and her father's disability. they lost another child that she didn't even remember for a long

time. and the house burned down, the home that he had built for his wife. so i think a lot of that left her with, you know, all this sort of confused feelings of responsibility. so as an adult, you can kind of see all this trauma playing out in her life and she certainly did get severely depressed at various periods and suicidal sometimes. so she did seem to suffer a lot. and her relationship with her mother was pretty rocky too. >> they had a lot of back and forth. >> yeah. >> but they must have also sort of supported each other, because she sent -- didn't she help send her mother's first manuscript to a publisher and sort of coached

her through what to do? >> oh yeah. i often say that i don't think we would have the little house books if it weren't for rose, because rose had a lot of experience as a writer. she had a lot of polish and professionalism. she knew publishing people. she knew a lot of editors in new york. she knew editors at magazines. so she was really kind of the driving force pushing her mother to take advantage of these memories that she'd been hearing about these stories about the pioneering days all her life. and she knew that there was some money to be made off of that, you know, that there was a real market for that. >> and possibly, i don't know, the fact that the country was becoming more modern made people nostalgic or interested in those older stories, i assume. >> definitely. you can really see that kicking in during the depression, that the stories in farmer boy were obviously really appealing to a public that doesn't know where their next meal is coming from.

you know, these stories about wonderful farms and these amazing meals that they used to prepare, farmer boy is full of accounts of eating pie for breakfast. you know, it was just the kind of wonderful nostalgia for a time of plenty during a time when people were desperate. >> i mean, obviously these books took a little liberty with history, right? but so did the tv series, probably even more. and maybe not that we should look to tv series for our history lessons, but a lot of people watched that show. so they probably got a pretty good idea that this was sort of how it was. what were some of the things that it got wrong, do you think? >> the tv show? >> mm-hm. >> more or less everything. >> really? >> i think that the tv show was so made up out of whole cloth, if you look at it now, it really was more about the 1970s than it was about the 1870s. and this was true of almost

everything coming out of hollywood. it's not like that was unusual. >> right. >> westerns and so forth are notoriously fantasies of what life was supposed to be like. but yeah, i mean, the way that charles ingalls was portrayed for example by michael landon, i have a picture in my slide show of michael landon with his shirt off, you know, and his chest shaved. >> that wasn't pa, huh?

>> that probably was not happening a lot on the prairie, i'm thinking. i could give you a million examples. they didn't wear sho to walk around, or go to town or go to school, right. >> right. >> but michael landon didn't want them to have -- >> i think michael landon really did emphasize the success of the family. so his kids did wear shoes. >> shoes, right. >> and they had toys that the -- you know, the real ingalls girls i think coveted and would have loved to have had but didn't have. >> but didn't, right. well, so also in the -- 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 portrayed in the books? i mean, laura -- there's some mixed sort of messages there, it

seems. >> yeah. i mean, i'm aware of just a handful of instances, especially one episode of the tv show, that showed what was meant to be an indian boy and laura's interaction with him. and i think that these were, again, just ideas of michael landon who apparently also repurposed a lot of "bonanza" episodes. >> oh, did he? >> yeah, so i don't really think it had anything to do with historical reality, or even with wilder's own memories, you know, that come through so strongly in "little house on the prairie," which she called her indian country novel, and which does portray a number of encounters with -- that she and her family

had with indians in kansas. which are, you know, today when we read them they're problematic and there's a certain amount of racist language and attitudes on display in that novel. >> but it's -- it's not laura, necessarily, who shows those, is it? i mean, her mother is quite afraid of indians. >> her mother is certainly. and a number of times when she uses this inflammatory language it's given to another character. it's not something laura is saying, or her father is saying. in fact, her father disagrees with it vocally. but i think nonetheless there are attitudes and expressions of how people see and interpret

indians and indian behavior that are -- that would never be published today. >> no. >> and so it's interesting to look at that novel as an expression of that time. i think it remains one of her most important novels. but i do think you have to understand it in its historical context. >> it's time. it's really a page turner, i think, that book is. i mean, there's always stuff happening. there's wolves, there's indians, there's, you know, just a lot of stuff. but, you know, as you know, the american library association a couple years ago renamed what was the laura ingalls wilder award in part because of this concern over a portrait of the indians, right? how do you feel about that? do you think that was necessary? >> i think it was necessary for

them because that's what they decided to do. and i understand why they did it. they were the institution that developed the award. they owned it. they had the right to change the name of it. but they didn't withdraw it. they didn't withdraw it from wilder herself who was the first recipient of it and they made a very public statement saying that they hoped that children and adults would continue to read the books. so it wasn't intended as an act of censorship. although i think the general public somehow interpreted it, at least in some quarters, as that, which i think is too bad because that wasn't the intent. >> but they still have a theodore guisele award. >> they do. >> theodore guisele was more

explicitly anti semitic, i think, than laura was in her novels. >> right. yes, he, in fact, published during the period of the second world war a number of racist images. so it's complicated. >> yeah. >> i mean, they actually have, i think, a different set of problems with that award based on how it was set up. >> oh, really? >> and their arrangement if the family. i don't know the full story behind that but i think there is some complications involved with that. but as far as wilder is concerned it had been something that they had been discussing for years. i know librarians had been concerned about it because there had been children in communities, in south dakota, and in other states in the

plains and the west who had actually, you know, come home from school in tears, you know. >> because -- >> because they had been reading "little house on the prairie" and had read these inflammatory things so i think it was a recognition that some of the books have become, you know, that their portrayal of indians is complex, and disturbing, and that that has to be acknowledged, that there has to be context provided for these books if they're going to continue to be taught in schools. >> how does that compare to, say, other sort of classic children's books though? i mean, are there -- i mean, wouldn't -- many of them, would every one of them pass the sort

of test of being not -- >> oh, surely not, and there have been many instances of this, my mother was a kindergarten teacher and taught first grade and i remember -- i remember her distress when she had to stop reading "little black sambo," you know, to kids and so this is something that has been happening and people reevaluate classics all the time and begin either withdrawing them from young children. i mean, i think that the issue is children, it's particularly notable and disturbing when it's children who are the audience for these works. sing for adults it's a totally different situation. you know, i mean, people are still reading and discussing

"huckleberry finn" for example in literature courses. but those are adults. and so it's a different set of standards, i think. >> hopefully they have more knowledge to put things in context, i would assume. >> sure. >> would you have them maybe edit or change anything now in the "little house" books to make that go away? >> no. i'm never a fan of -- and i don't think it's necessary. i don't think it solves a problem. i think you just need to either reconsider who's reading the books, and what age they are when they read the books. and provide context. or, you know -- i mean, i'm not an educator. i'm not somebody who has those

kinds of skills. but i just think it's an issue with, you know, all of literature from previous periods. >> which, by the way, i think when my children were young there was a new picture book that came out that was about -- was like "little black sambo," it was the story, wasn't called that, of course, and had different illustrations that were more respectful and it was a darling little book. i read it to my daughter a lot. i can't remember what the name of it is now. but they -- they called him something slightly different. but i think it was based on that. it's just that it had been reillustrated so that it told the story more kind of respectfully. anyway, so it's probably about time for other people to think of some questions. there are microphones over here, and you'll have to get up to go to them because they don't -- they don't roam around the room.

so would anyone else like to ask caroline fraser a question? >> this is an easy one. do you have a favorite novel by laura ingalls wilder? if so, which one and why? >> okay, yes. i've always really loved "the long winter," which is her novel about the family's survival of this hellacious winter of 1880 to 1881. and it describes how the ingalls family was basically kind of trapped in their house in de smet for months at a time as the food dwindled and dwindled.

you know, they were down to their last sack of potatoes, i think, when this young man named almanzo wilder with another fellow in town made a kind of desperate journey to get the seed wheat from a farmer outside of town and they risked their lives to go find that wheat and this, of course, actually all happened and it's beautifully written. it's an extraordinary survival tale. and it's just very evocative of the kind of terror, and numbness that overtakes you, you know, when you're subjected to these kinds of conditions. and then, of course, it all comes right in the end. you know, through this act of heroism by the man she eventually marries. so it's a wonderful novel.

>> and did -- were they happy for the rest of their lives, do you think? >> oh, right, yes. i do think that they were. i mean, i think their marriage was difficult in the ways that many marriages are, you know, that they had sometimes real sort of power struggles, you know. i think laura was a really forceful person. she had -- she had a hot temper. she would often, you know, fly off the handle. i think she was quite quick to anger. i think she knew this about herself and sort of regretted it. but nonetheless. and yet he was very, you know, patient with her. he would say, i think, later in life that, you know, he knew that about her when he married her. and i think that he admired her kind of fire, her fiery personality. and i do think that they loved each other deeply.

i don't think it was always easy though for them. >> do you have a favorite "little house" site? some people go on pilgrimages to different locations. do you have a favorite? >> yeah, you know, there's something wonderful at all of them. but one of my favorites is the plum creek site. the town of walnut grove is quite interesting in itself, and there's a lot there. but there's this area where the family dugout was right next to plum creek. and you can see -- still see the depression in the earth where the dugout must have collapsed at one point. and it's such a lovely place. the owners of it have really kind of preserved the character of it. so you can kind of see the views that they must have seen, and take in a little bit of the

character of the land. and it's just a beautiful little spot. >> what do you think -- oh, go ahead. >> would you talk a little bit about laura's relationship with her sister mary. >> oh, sure. yeah, i mean, that was a critical, you know, part of her life, i think, because they obviously -- the two sisters, mary and laura, had a real kind of competition. they were very competitive with each other. and mary tended to be -- you know, when they were younger kind of much more pious and proper and a little bit prim which was something that laura always resented. and i think this was true. i think this was a difference between them. and then when mary fell ill and nearly died, and then became blind, laura was then, you know,

really kind of forced into this role that she had never contemplated for herself which was to become a teacher. that was what mary had been intending to do, and her parents had always hoped that mary would teach and be able to make a little money that way. and so it was this huge, i think, shock for laura that then she had to step into those shoes. and it showed her, she said, that, you know, she really could do something that she didn't want to do. she was never comfortable, you know, doing that so young and yet she did do it. she forced herself to do it and it was really hard. for her. to step up in front of kids who were bigger than she was, you know. >> she was a small person. >> yes, she was -- >> i mean, wasn't she just under

5'0". >> she was just around 5'0". and so, you know, i think that relationship stayed with her really for the rest of her life, even though she and mary were separated for most of their adult lives. and i think that even the -- you know, some of those little childhood resentments stayed with her too. she would describe those with such feeling, you know, later in life, that it was clear that that remained a kind of -- i think it created her love of fairness and her intolerance of injustice. you know, she was very quick to be angry about things that she felt to be an injustice. i think that came from her competition with mary. >> i've really enjoyed your talk

so far. and i just had a couple questions. i'll do the one. i know you said you love the books. how did you get into researching like you did? i know most people, you read books, you love the books and you don't go as far as you have where you have researched these people for years. what led you into doing what you've done? >> to me, the historical background of the ingalls' lives was really fascinating. and the more i got into that the more i wanted to find out. it was almost like putting together a puzzle or something. you know, there were all these kind of missing pieces that i wanted to find the answers to. and so i think that was a big part of it. i also, you know, you had mentioned earlier that, you know, nobody at harvard would have studied something like this. i did feel that there was an importance to these books, that

they really deserved attention and explication and analysis in a way that they hadn't -- not that there aren't 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's fine to not be a fan of the "little house"

books as well, there are lots of people who don't like them. which i completely understand. and i think that's totally legitimate. but i do think they're important. i think they've helped shape our ideas about homesteading and about our history with farming and settlement that we need to know more about those things. >> did you have another question? >> i'll go ahead and ask. i know somebody else is coming up. how does it make you feel knowing your book is as big as it is, how does it make an author feel knowing this book is like huge out there? >> well, it's enormously -- >> i'm just curious what authors think like that. >> it's enormously gratifying to get a response to your work because of course most writers

and certainly i have, you know, spent a lot of years sitting by myself in a room, you know, not talking to anybody, just working. and so it's wonderful to have readers and to meet readers and to hear their responses and their enthusiasm for the topic. >> well, were you surprised when you won the pulitzer? >> i was shocked. deeply, deeply shocked, yes, very surprised. >> question? >> yes. i read that charles ingalls' lineage stopped with rose when she passed away. did rose not have any children or grace or the other sister? >> no, carrie had a couple of her -- the man that she married had a couple of children before they married. but she had no children of her own. mary had no children. grace had no children.

rose, likewise, did not have any surviving children. rose did have a kind of habit later in her life of sort of casually adopting, so adopted several young people in a kind of temporary way. and one of those people eventually became the inher fit of the estate, a fellow named roger mcbride who she met when he was the 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. and my favorite was always "the long winter" and my view is

certainly colored now, having read about that lazy couple that lived with them during the long winter. the other thing, whenever i read those books -- well, i still do. i always wondered. i knew that laura was born right after the civil war and it was never mentioned, you know like charles never apparently fought in the war. and it seems to me from the book it just sort of -- was it when the draft came that he just sort of disappeared for a year? is that kind of -- >> yeah, that's a very interesting period. and it remains, i think, an unanswered question, why he did not serve. there was some history there. i mean, the ingalls, charles and caroline married in 1860. she had a brother who died in

the war. and it may have been, you know, just speculating here, but she might have discouraged his participation. but yes, they do kind of drop off the map briefly around that time. and then turn up in pepin, wisconsin. and that was an area where a lot of men were in wisconsin were kind of drifting off into the lumber camps and so forth in the northern part of the state to potentially avoid the draft, which was quite contentious subject in wisconsin although i think the state of wisconsin ended up sending more men to fight in the war than almost any other state.

>> really? >> so it's -- you know, it's tan tantalizing and interesting to think about what that might have been like. and why none of the ingalls boys, except the two youngest who ended up volunteering very late in the war, why none of them served. >> it's very interesting. now, in mansfield, this roger mcbride, he kind of took over the royalties, or whatever, of some of the "little house" books, didn't he, and wasn't the mansfield public library supposed to get them later but they never did? they got a lump settlement, i think. >> right. yeah, laura's will did leave the wright county library, i think it was, the proceeds, the

royalties. she left them all to rose for rose's lifetime, but then once rose had died it was supposed to go to the library. and he engaged in some legal machinations to prevent that from happening. so after he died then there was a bit of a reckoning and a lawsuit was filed by the library and they did get a settlement for, you know, a fairly substantial sum. so yeah, it was a little -- a little shady. >> yeah. >> question? >> i'm sorry, because i'm not american, but, you know "little house on the prairie" the tv series kept a benchmark in our country. i was a big fan. so when i was a teenager. can i request something?

because i believe that the majority of people in here are a big fan of you. so can i take -- can you take a photograph at the end of this event? >> he wants your photograph. well, she was going to sign, but there's no books to sign. you're going to sign the -- >> no, i'd be happy to. >> thank you. >> that's very cute. do we have any other questions? because i could keep asking questions all night long, but -- i don't know, pam, here's someone. >> so you kind of mentioned this at the beginning about the possibility that this one author brought up that rose really was the author of the books. and i read the annotated bibliography. took me forever, but i read it.

and when you read that you can see where she sent things to rose and rose kept sending them back saying no, do this, do this. so it was -- it was more like rose was her editor than the author. so, you know, to me it will always be laura ingalls wilder's books. >> yeah, they definitely had a collaboration is what people often call it. i think it was -- you know, kind of mother, daughter, writer, editor collaboration. but rose contributed a lot. and more clearly edited more heavily than a standard editor in new york might have done at that time. so it is worth studying and talking about. and i don't think we're done with that even today. and there are certain stages of the manuscripts that appear to

be missing. so it really does show you a lot about their process when you look at what remains. i think that, though, that it is clear that laura did produce the raw material that became the books and rose brought a lot to it in the editing. >> can you compare her writing and her farm columns to the writing in the novels, and tell, is there any substantial difference in the tone or the language she uses, or her style of writing? >> yeah, there are some really interesting moments in the farm columns. and also in the speech that she delivered about her work, which was entirely hers, rose didn't contribute to it at all. she gave this famous speech at the detroit book fair about why she'd written the books.

and she was only halfway through at that point. but i think you can tell that she had her own voice. she had her own style which was very different than rose's. you know, she had a very plain spoken, not melodramatic, very factual and kind of affecting tone whereas rose's contributions are often much more kind of hyperdramatic. >> more melodramatic. >> and more polished, sometimes. so it is possible to discern the different voices. and i think that a lot of what makes the "little house" books unique is laura's -- >> voice. >> voice and her perceptions, her memories of what she saw and experienced. >> i have two completely

unrelated questions. the first is, the books are somewhat fictionalized. how much would you say is history, and how much is fiction? >> i think what's in the books is often very factual and factually accurate. laura really cared about getting things right. and described things quite accurately. for example, the -- you know, the famous locust plague on the banks of plum creek, very accurate description. what she left out was what happened to the family after that event. the, you know, period of kind of financial collapse and homelessness and drifting around. so a lot of how she's changing

her story is leaving things out that she didn't want to write about, that she thought were not appropriate for children. >> the second question regarding her estate, is any part of her estate used to maintain the various sites, like mansfield and plum creek? >> not directly, to my knowledge, i know that roger mcbride did give generously to some of the sites including mansfield, he was instrumental in setting up a museum. he also contributed items from his -- you know, from rose's possessions to de smet. i know de smet has some of her

furniture, and other materials he has. i don't know whether he set up any kind of permanent bequest, but i know that he did give them money. i think many of them, though, struggle for funding. and it's too bad that there's not a kind of national, you know, support for those sites because -- literary sites really do need help. >> didn't mansfield have plans to build another building or something recently? >> they did. it was opened -- a couple years ago. they have a new museum now. >> any other questions?

>> we'll just wrap it up then. thank you all so much for coming. let's give a round of applause. a couple programs from our american history tv's real america series, first all the way home, 1957 film looking at changing racial demographics in u.s. neighborhoods then it's the american look, this film examines the style of mass goods produced in the 1950s, including classic american cars, we'll show you cable 26 pioneers induction ceremony, honoring those who made lasting contributions to the cable and broad band industry, more from reel america with crisis in -- a film about racial issues in american suburbs during the

1950s. a look at presidential leadership during the cold war with historian hitchcock, also the author of the age of eisenhower, america and the world in the 1950s. then at 9:00 p.m., a u.s. constitutional debate, hosted by the colonial williams burg foundation, featuring a reenactment from founding

fathers james madison and george mason on issues from the bill of rights to slavery. watch american history tv, this weekend, on c-span 3. with joe biden as president-elect, stay with c-span for live coverage of the election process and transition of power. c-span, your unfiltered view of politics. up next on american history tv, author donald miller interviews jessica shattuck about her novel "the women in the castle," she explains how her family's connection to nazi germany influenced her work and how her research informed her understanding of german citizens during world war ii, this one-hour talk was part of a three-day conference hosted by