Beyond the Prairie The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder

I finally had time to sit down and watch Beyond Prairie: True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder before it is due back to the library. A week flies by fast and I did not want to renew it.

The reviews of this had left me with questions about how I would enjoy it. Some hated Disney's The Little House on the Prairie because it dared to contradict Michael Landon's Little House on the Prairie: The Complete Television Series. Never having been a fan of Landon's series I went into watching the Disney version of Laura's early life with an open mind and it inspired me to research and read more about her life.

I was hoping that this second movie would be equally as good. Sadly, while I disagree with many of the reviews I read, this was not equal to the first movie. Many of the reviews took issue with the color of Meredith Monroe's hair because she is blond and Laura was a brunette. They also were upset that Barbara Reams, a red head, played Mary instead of a blond actress. While many claimed to be Ingalls’ scholars, what confirmed ignorance of the subject to me was many complaints about the failure to include Nellie Olsen in the story. While the TV series kept the Olsen and the Ingalls families in Walnut Grove together, those who actually have studied Laura's life know that the two separated when Laura's family moved to DeSmet. Nellie was never a part of Laura's adult life.

I saw a few problems with this movie. First, it falls far short of being the true story of Lara Ingalls Wilder. The movie adds details and episodes that are not included in Laura's books or in any biographical information commonly known about Laura and Almanzo. The second fault is the timeline. The book starts during The Long Winter (Little House). I was interested in seeing this done as a movie. Unfortunately, this is where the problems started. All movie writers have to select scenes from the material they have available to write their screenplay. What never made sense to me is what was selected and what was left out. Why did the writers feel a need to supplement, when so much wonderful material was left on the cutting floor because there was simply not enough time in a mini-series to include all of her adult life?

I thought the writers did a great job in capturing Pa Ingalls and providing Richard Thomas with material to bring Charles Ingalls to life for the first time. While many love Michael Landon's version he is no reflection of the Charles Ingalls of Laura's books or any biographical information that exists about the man. Unlike many of the reviewers, I also liked Lindsay Crouse as Caroline Ingalls. Again, many look to the Little House TV series, but if you read the books, you realize Ma was not a wallflower. She did have an influence on her husband. By the time, they had settled in DeSmet she and Pa did discuss his desire to move even though he had promised her they would never move again. After Laura married, with a blind adult daughter and two young daughters to consider Carline's concern is reasonable and even expected. Whether the scene would have happened as demonstrated in this movie is questionable. However, having the scene open to the audience did make the couple more real.

I liked Meredith Monroe as Laura. She showed an adult Laura that Melissa Gilbert never seemed to achieve. The problem I had with Laura's character is the writers felt a need to supplement her story. She and Almanzo had an interesting relationship, romance, and marriage. Yet, somehow, it was deemed not interesting enough so the writers sought to add details that did not exist and splice events together to make things happen in an order that did not seem natural. In doing so, they lost the chance to present the true story as promised.

One constant complaint I had while watching the movie is I always felt I was walking in on the end of a scene. I do not know if it was edited after filming or written that way, but there are scenes that seem to make no sense because it feels like you missed a scene. Laura goes off to teach school and Almanzo picks her up and asks her to marry him. In fact, Laura goes off the first time to teach school in Little Town on the Prairie. However, unlike the movie presents it that is not the only time Laura teaches. Almanzo does not marry her after her first teaching job. She returns to school and actually teaches again. The author creates an elaborate outdoor honeymoon for the couple and then we meet Rose. We never see them as a couple and the struggles that first year brought them. Before we know it, Laura is delivering her second child, just as we realize she is pregnant again and the story is changed to a stillbirth.

While the movie does mention Laura and Almanzo's bouts with diphtheria, no mention is made of their moves from De Smet to live first with family and then to Florida to see if the climate would help Almanzo regain his strength. Instead, the movie condenses the story, leaving out the moves. This leaves Laura and Almanzo in De Smet for the entire time. They only leave to head to Missouri where they would make their final home.

The movie was divided into two parts. The DVD I had had both on one. The second part focused on the time period after The First Four Years (Little House). With Almanzo too ill to work the homestead, Laura and Almanzo have decided to relocate. Of course, the movie ignores the fact they have already moved several times. If you read biographies of Laura, you discover Almanzo had read literature on Missouri and hoped that apple growing in Missouri would be a better situation for them. The movie implies Laura was constantly working at becoming a writer. Nothing in her biographies suggests that. In fact, Laura was working on helping Almanzo support the family. Laura helped earn the money that provided the income to buy the property in Missouri. That fact the movie ignores completely. Laura did keep a journal about their wagon trip to Missouri. Her journals were edited and published after her death.

The movie spends a great deal of time on the Wilder's hired hand and hints at a relationship between Laura and the man. We are told the sad story of the man's life and the loss of his wife and child as a means of connecting to Laura's loss of her son. There is a focus on Rose's trouble in school and an incident where she is lost in a cave and Laura and the handyman find her. During all this time Almanzo is nowhere to be found as he is struggling with continued side effects of his diphtheria exposure. This was a problem for me. Almanzo did struggle with reduced physical abilities for the remainder of his life. However, there is no indication that he disappeared from farm life completely. There is no evidence he would have left Laura to negotiate and consult with the hired help. This just kept leading me back to what the writers chose to include and all the MANY incidents they left out that could have been included in the time allowed.

I do not regret watching the movie. It was worth it to see a good portrayal of Charles Ingalls and not to see Mary married and teaching at the school for the blind. While this version played with the truth, at least some facts remained. I was glad to see they did include Laura's final trip home to see her father, mother, and Mary before they died. There are many complaints that the Ingalls family was not included more in Laura's adult life. However, travel was not inexpensive. With Almanzo's physical challenges, leaving him could not have been easy. Rose paid for Laura's expenses when she went to California to see her and Laura worried greatly about Almanzo while she was gone. Instead of making up stories about how Laura got interested in writing, it would have been wonderful to see Laura as a farm writer working from home to help pay off the mortgage on the farm. If the writers eliminated the farm hand stories, there would have been time.

I hope that someone will do film justice to the adult story of Laura Ingalls Wilder one day.

Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House in the Ozarks

While I enjoyed all the books I have read about Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Ozarks: A Laura Ingalls Wilder Sampler : The Rediscovered Writings was especially interesting to me as a freelance writer. This book is a collection of her published articles she wrote for a farm paper. The topics range widely. They are based mostly on her personal opinions, experiences, and advice. Previous biographies indicate she made some decent money on these articles comparable to our current pay structure for WAH writers. In some cases, she made even better rates.

Her topics are not unfamiliar to me as they sound like conversations I had with my father's mother prior to her death. Her writing style is typical of other articles I have read from the time. What has inspired me was her goal. Her focus in writing was not a main source of income. The focus of this writing was not the same as the books she became famous for writing. She wrote to create a supplementary income that would help pay off the first farm mortgage and then later notes taken on the property. This has been my goal as well. I have not found my niche in writing that will make this a primary income source. However, I am pleased to see our home mortgage decrease more each month as I can apply writing income against principal. The rest goes into emergency savings. From the biographies I have read, that was another of her goals, too, emergency savings. Farm life was never secure. In this economy, nobody can guarantee jobs are secure. Paying down debt and saving money for a rainy day is not a wasted effort. While I hope I find my niche that provides me with a full time income, I feel encouraged to know I am not in bad company with my current goals.

The library obtained Beyond Prairie: True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder for me and I checked it out Saturday. This is a movie version of Laura's adult life. I have read varying reviews. I am interested to see it for myself after having read several biographies of her life. The Disney version of her early life was mostly accurate. I am interested to see what Paramount did with her adult life.

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Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder

Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Woman Behind the Legend (MISSOURI BIOGRAPHY SERIES) is written in a more traditional biographical format. The other two books I read are based on Laura's writings and what can be drawn from reading them. In this book, the author still uses Laura's writings and historical documents, but puts them in a more traditional biographical style of writing.

One of the things I found helpful is the author creates a more structured timeline for Laura's life using historical documents, family letters, and other materials to trace Laura's life. He explains how and sometimes why Laura lumped events together in her books and why some items were left out, like the death of her younger brother. After I watched the biographical DVD of her life, I was confused about the timeline with her living in the Big Woods and in Indian Territory. The author explains the timeline and even some of the reasons for writing the story she wrote it.

The author also addresses the controversy of who wrote Laura's books. I really knew little of Rose Wilder when I read the books as a child. I learned that she was a well known writer long before her mother took pen to paper only as an adult. There are biographers of Rose Wilder who wish to push forth the case that Laura's books were in fact Rose's work. However, this author returns to sources. He uses letters between Laura and Rose discussing editing of the books to continue the argument that Rose and Laura did work together. Rose had more publishing experience and understood what would be published and how to edit. Her work on the books as an editor is clearly documented in Laura's letters to Rose and Rose's to Laura. One has to ask if Rose was writing the books, why would Laura need to be writing drafts for Rose to edit? The author makes a compelling case that Laura's farm style of writing is not vastly different from the story telling she does in her books. However, Rose's stories about pioneer life do not have the same flavor at all.

The author does not shy away from the challenging mother-daughter relationship. It was actually quite compelling and made Laura a more real person in my mind. There are many people in the world that can relate to a challenging mother-daughter relationship. Instead of making me think less of the woman, I found it easier to relate to her as a human being. What was interesting is that no matter how challenging the relationship they seemed compelled to keep trying. Rose continued to help her Mom with editing her work, even though as a writer she needed to focus on her own work to eat. Her parents also continued to reach out when they could. Laura and Almanzo put a note on their farm to bail Rose and her husband out and by all accounts never got the money back. While other biographers have focused on Rose as the victim/heroine in the relationship, I suspect there is a personal motive. I see neither as heroine or villain. The more I read about these two women, the more I get the impression of two strong women with very different ideals clashing.

I also did find out more about Mary. Mary did not marry, but her crafts did bring in some money to help support her parents during hard times. Laura mentions a hammock they took with them to Missouri that Mary made for them in one of her journal entries. After finishing her time at the school for the blind Mary stayed with her parents, continuing to live with her Mom after her father's death. After her Mom's death, she lived with both Grace and Carrie until she died in 1928.

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A Little House Traveler

After watching the biography The Little House on the Prairie
on television, I reserved some biographies at the library to read about the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I wanted to know more about the life of the woman who wrote one of my favorite series of children's books. After watching this program, I realized I had spent little time getting to know the historical woman. A Little House Traveler: Writings from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Journeys Across America was the first book I read. This book chronicled three of Laura's adult journeys. The first trip was followed using Laura's journals kept during her move from De Smet, South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri. This journey relocated Laura, Almanzo, and Rose away from her family permanently. The second journey follows Laura's letters to Almanzo as she takes a long trip to visit Rose and cover the San Francisco Expedition for the local farm papers in 1915. This was the first I ever heard of Laura Ingalls Wilder reporter. She wrote under the pen name Mrs. A J Wilder. Some of her stories were submitted under her husband's name, according to various biographers to give the stories more credibility.

As a writing freelancer, myself this is likely one of the most interesting pieces of information I have learned about the woman. The third book I am reading about her actually is based on her farm paper articles she wrote and they are quite good.

The last trip discussed is one she and Almanzo took to revisit De Smet in 1931. This returns to Laura's journals as well as letters to Rose as a means to document the trip and their experiences while on the visit. One of the things that struck me as I read this book was how long and active a life she lived. She was born in 1867 and lived until 1957. The changes she and Almanzo saw in their life times were amazing. In 1894 Laura and Almanzo traveled by wagon from De Smet to Missouri. In 1931, Almanzo and Laura returned in a car. They had lived through one World War and both would survive the second. It never occurred to me, that they lived that late into the twentieth century.

What I really enjoyed about this book is it is based heavily on original sources. The three biographies I have read have focused on what can be proven, not on gossip, speculation, and what seems like would make good book sales. Other resources I have looked at have wanted to focus on other issues that I will discuss in my next review.


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Laura Ingalls Wilder the Adult

I was a big fan of the written series of Little House books. One of my favorite Christmas presents was The Complete Little House Nine-Book Set. My friends and I read and reread the books, sharing our favorite scenes and coming to know the characters. This was before the Michael Landon's butchering of the books with Little House on the Prairie: The Complete Television Series. Yes, I said butchering. I think he could have written a pioneer show that centered on himself with a focus on morals and values without ruining the series for a generation of children. I am still amazed when I hear people upset that the books or biographies of Laura Ingalls Wilder get it "wrong" because it is not the story they remember from Landon's version. It is sad when people fail to remember television is not known for historical accuracy.

I caught the end of an ABC biography The Little House on the Prairie that detailed the time period around the first two Little House books. Unable to locate a second showing on my cable system I borrowed the DVD from the library. One issue I have discovered with borrowing both DVD's and now book CD's from the library is they vary in condition. Sadly, this one had a tough life. The scratches made it challenging to watch. However, it left me with more questions I wanted answered. I had not done much biographical research about Laura Ingalls Wilder. I knew from reading other autobiographies that people can write more about how they felt than from historical accuracy. Details and events are not always written about in a manner a biographer will take. That is why some have taken to calling Laura's books historical fiction. She has moved and manipulated events in her books to suit her writing.

For instance, the trip from the Big Woods was actually two trips, not one. The family did return after the first trip and removal from Indian Territory prior to setting out again. Laura's account compiles all the events into one book about her family's experiences in the Little House in the Big Woods.

Watching the DVD left me with more questions than answers. However, as with many things, time gets in the way and my questions were postponed. There were things I wanted to know. For instance, what happened to Mary Ingalls? Sadly, Google searches keep bringing up references to the show and the life of the actress that played her. Not the information I wanted to know. I was curious about the real Mary Ingalls. I knew she would not have had the fairy tale ending Michael Landon gave her married and teaching at the school for the blind, but there was still a story. What happened to Laura and Almanzo after The First Four Years? I knew they eventually ended up in the Ozarks. Why did they go there?


Over the next few days, I will share the biographies I read and some of what I learned.


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