Generations of little girls have grown up with Laura Ingalls Wilder; first with the books than during the seventies and eighties with the television show, but where does the myth end and reality begin? Wendy McClure becomes re-obsessed with one of her favorite childhood books Little House on the Prairie and sets out on a quest to find the real world of Laura, or the real world as she perceives it, and along the way finds that the Laura she thought she knew did not have the carefree, everything will work out life as portrayed in the books and later the television series. McClure learns that the producer of the television show had filed a lawsuit against the museum where the original Kansas homestead to stop them from using the name Little House on the Prairie---uh, isn’t that what it is? McClure also learns of the various prejudices the Ingalls had, especially toward the Native American Indians, and she finds evidence that Pa skipped out of Iowa once to avoid paying rent. In addition to visiting as many of the preserved sights as she was able to, McClure churns butter, makes vanity cakes and spends the night on a farm where she encounters a group of survivalists hoping to learn skills that will see them through the end of the world. McClure also reads many of the more scholarly works written about Laura Ingalls Wilder as well as the manuscript of Pioneer Girl an unpublished memoir among Rose Wilder Lane’s papers at the Herbert Hoover Library. More than just the story of trying to recreate Half-Pint’s adventures, The Wilder Life explores the concept of memoir as fiction and the social mores and conditions of an earlier time. Told with hope, wit, wisdom and even a big of self-deprecation, this book is an adventure that anyone who spent time in Walnut Grove or DeSmet will not want to miss.
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