Prairie Fires

Book 54 of my 2019 Reading Challenge

read from July 10 - August 26

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder

by Caroline Fraser

Summary (via Goodreads)

published 2017

My Opinion

2 stars

This was a tough one to get through but I'm not sure why.  It felt like I was reading so much (almost 600 pages) but not getting a lot of information.

I don't know...2 star reviews are ones I just kind of shrug off because I didn't dislike it enough to be angry about it (1 star reviews are venting) but I also didn't like it enough to think any more about it or put time into a review.  Meh.

As an aside:  the sections about Native Americans and how they were treated makes me so sad and frustrated because they were treated so poorly and it's never talked about.

A Few Quotes from the Book

"The real [Laura] was not a caricature. Her story, spanning ninety years, is broader, stranger, and darker than her books, containing whole chapters she could scarcely bare to examine. She hinted as much when she said, in a speech, 'All I have told is true but it is not the whole truth.' "

"In this and in every other book, it would be the unique combination of their skills that created a transcendent whole: Wilder laying a plain, solid foundation of factual description, holding to simplicity of speech and emotion, while her daughter trimmed, honed, and heightened the drama, adding embellishment and ornamentation."

"She was coming to the end. She had done exactly what she set out to do, memorializing her beloved family."