Eerie how many parts of the Prairie Fires descriptions could perfectly describe the situation in Palestine today (government propping up settlers, using starvation as a tool for genocide, etc...). White supremacy and colonialism are alive and well!!!
Thanks for highlighting this great book and making so many connections to influencers today. I've been a lifelong LIW fan and Prairie Fires really helped me start to unpack some of the myths I had instinctively bought into!
I was so obsessed with the Little House books as a kid (and being from England, they were total escapism!) I remember Little House on the Prairie making me feel uncomfortable with the casual and not-so-casual racism, although I couldn't have put it into exact words (and it was a lot worse than what I was picking up on). I remember a scene at the end of the book where Laura wants to have a baby belonging to an Indigenous family. It's terrible, and I remember being confused by it as a kid, but something I take from it now (and I could be completely off the mark) is Laura expressing a yearning for what she sees as a wild, free kind of life, as I remember a line about wildness in his eyes (and I am not trying to excuse the racism and dehumanisation of the whole scene!)
My favourites of the books were Plum Creek and The Long Winter. Plum Creek just seemed like the best way of living and The Long Winter enthralled me in the horror of it all. I have always been curious about the whole bathroom situation, especially in The Long Winter. And how they washed their clothes! As an adult, I feel so bad for Ma in every book but especially that one and Plum Creek - I can't imagine having to live in a dugout of all places with small kids and have a baby (not included in the books). I mean, it's bad enough without children! And The Long Winter - that must have been terrifying; trying to keep a routine and everyone optimistic and stopping Pa from going on some crazy quest to find wheat. Pa is a whole new kind of figure on reread; I used to think he was so fun as a kid and now I think he was insanely irresponsible and a little (or a lot) cruel for making Ma leave her family and community and drag his family across unsettled land for years. Didn't he know about the grasshopper situation?! I'm pretty sure he was given a heads-up, either by the guy who sold him the land or by the people leaving it. And then he makes everyone move whenever he gets bored anyway!
I remember feeling so betrayed when I found out Laura was a Libertarian and big time conservative, even moreso when I found out her parents took money from the government for Mary's school and just prairie life in general. What gives, Laura?! I always wondered if anyone ever brought that up to her. This turned out to be a longer comment than planned, but thanks so much for the post!
And that’s even without mentioning: Mary becoming blind, due complications of scarlet fever (I.e. what can follow a strep infection without antibiotics). Ma & Pa losing their baby son traumatically due to illness, and Laura later traumatically losing her baby son (possibly due to a seizure, but who knows.) Laura’s husband becoming permanently disabled due to diphtheria (now there’s a vaccine) as well as one or both of them possibly becoming infertile (they believed) since they were unable to have more children afterward. Under such circumstances, I can’t imagine being beautifully “in the moment” with my children vs. constantly worried. But sure, let’s drink raw milk and forget about vaccines…
Yes! I read the Little House books growing up and they weren't my favorites (I was more of a Betsy-Tacy, All-of-a-Kind Family kid!), but it's fascinating to read how when Wilder started writing professionally, she did exactly what the newspapers did when she was a little girl (and earlier!) and they were trying to get white families to move West, glamorizing/romanticizing the lifestyle and insisting that you could totally do it with hard work, when she KNEW that no matter how hard most people worked, they couldn't.
(A few other thoughts about this book!)
I thought it was the right choice and so powerful to start with the history of Indigenous peoples in the West. The other thing that I didn't know anything about but that blew my mind was how much the clearing of the forests and plains at this time impacted the climate and the soil, and actually made it harder to farm. Like, I KNOW that that happens if you clear the natural ecosystems, but I definitely tend to think of climate change as an even more recent phenomenon.
And lastly, I highlighted a quote from Grover Cleveland about how the business of government wasn't to support its people, something like that. TELL ME ABOUT IT, SIR.
I loved both the Betsy-Tacy and All of a Kind Family books, and I wish they had as much popularity as the Little House books. Maybe it's because Michael Landon didn't make a sappy TV series out of them, and I should probably be grateful for that.
And like, those are also both romanticized versions of what it was like in those places and at those times. All-of-a-Kind Family in particular—like, it was definitely not that lovely to grow up on the Lower East Side in the tenements. There’s a book out there about Sydney Taylor that I want to get ahold of next!
My grandfather was the basis for the Tom Slade character in the Betsy-Tacy books. Life was definitely much harder than Lovelace depicted. But writers are allowed to fictionalize their own lives a bit.
Oh, totally! I just wanted to be clear that I don’t necessarily think Betsy-Tacy or All-of-a-Kind are more realistic depictions of the past than Little House.
This was so fascinating! Reading this made me think about the extra layer of “manifest destiny” indoctrination we received as Mormons in Utah. For starters, manifest destiny is basically the plot of the Book of Mormon. One of the central takeaways from the Book of Mormon is that Native Americans were cursed by God for their wickedness and need to be saved by white Christians in the modern era. Also, each summer LDS teenagers cosplay the pioneer trek across the country, dressing up in pioneer outfits and pushing handcarts for a week while working in assigned “families.” I know the racist and whitewashed “cowboy and Indian” narrative runs deep nationwide, but the level of indoctrination re: pioneer heritage/manifest destiny runs particularly deep for Mormons. Each year Utah celebrates a state holiday called Pioneer Day. When we spent a year of school learning about Utah history, a disproportionate amount was spent on pioneers. We were raised to be so proud of our pioneer heritage. And yes, very conveniently missing from that indoctrination was the truth about how Mormon pioneers killed and drove Native Americans from their land. Also missing was the truth that many of these pioneer women whom Neeleman romanticizes were spiritually coerced into miserable polygamous marriages.
On the one hand, it’s weird that Neeleman, an LDS woman, would romanticize the pioneer/frontier life when the death and sacrifice of those people has been drilled into her since she was a child (fuel for the persecution narrative). But on the other, it makes perfect sense because we were conditioned literally since infancy to revere these women as the ultimate example of righteousness and sacrifice.
This got me thinking about Ballerina Farm's financials. Obviously it's a private company and they won't release profit data, but given the amount of generational wealth backing Daniel, they probably don't have to make any money at all. Do we know if it's actually profitable?
I’m sure it’s not. Before I knew about the generational wealth, I was mystified as to how they could possibly survive on the income from their farm. It just didn’t make any sense. Then I learned about the JetBlue dollars and it all came together.
RUNNING to get Prairie Fires from the library today. As usual, reading this newsletter makes me feel smarter, more literate and also gives me things to read that won't make me brain dead! :)
This was excellent Sara! I also loved Prairie Fires and the Wilder podcast. As a kid growing up in the PNW we were particularly sold on the romanticism of the Oregon Trail and pioneers making their way West and there was ZERO discussion about how those settlers were stealing land from Indigenous peoples in some truly heinous ways. I too loved the Little House books growing up and it has been kind of mind blowing as an adult to understand the true story behind them, especially their use as Libertarian propaganda.
Side note, I would love for you to do an exploration of the "cozy game" genre, particularly all of the farming sims out there, and how it intersects with this current moment of longing for a "simpler" time. I am admittedly a fan of these games myself, but all of them follow a very similar formula where you play a homesteading farmer who eventually marries and has a kid. A lot of these games are not made in the U.S. (the ur-example, Harvest Moon, was developed in Japan), but they have definitely exploded in popularity here and there is now a whole category of cozy game influencers, many of whom are distinctly cottagecore/trad wife adjacent. Idk, there might be nothing here but it's something I've been noodling on.
If you need a pretty realistic frontier woman period film fix, I highly recommend the 1979 movie Heartland starting Conchata Ferrell and Rip Torn, inspired by a true story and based on “Letters of a Woman Homesteader.” It’s currently included with Prime Video. Heads up - there’s a pig slaughtering scene that’s rough to watch.
I'm currently reading Prairie Fires and while I really appreciate the research and thoughtfulness I am occasionally flummoxed by simple errors. At one point she is listing the belongings Laura and Manly auction in order to leave the Dakotas, she lists two two-year-old fillies, which she identifies as "these are their riding ponies." No, they're not. First, these horses are too young, and second we know that the riding ponies were bought when the Wilders were newly-weds, some years previous. I know it's nitpicky but some editor should have caught that. It starts to make the reader distrust everything.
Eerie how many parts of the Prairie Fires descriptions could perfectly describe the situation in Palestine today (government propping up settlers, using starvation as a tool for genocide, etc...). White supremacy and colonialism are alive and well!!!
Thanks for highlighting this great book and making so many connections to influencers today. I've been a lifelong LIW fan and Prairie Fires really helped me start to unpack some of the myths I had instinctively bought into!
I was so obsessed with the Little House books as a kid (and being from England, they were total escapism!) I remember Little House on the Prairie making me feel uncomfortable with the casual and not-so-casual racism, although I couldn't have put it into exact words (and it was a lot worse than what I was picking up on). I remember a scene at the end of the book where Laura wants to have a baby belonging to an Indigenous family. It's terrible, and I remember being confused by it as a kid, but something I take from it now (and I could be completely off the mark) is Laura expressing a yearning for what she sees as a wild, free kind of life, as I remember a line about wildness in his eyes (and I am not trying to excuse the racism and dehumanisation of the whole scene!)
My favourites of the books were Plum Creek and The Long Winter. Plum Creek just seemed like the best way of living and The Long Winter enthralled me in the horror of it all. I have always been curious about the whole bathroom situation, especially in The Long Winter. And how they washed their clothes! As an adult, I feel so bad for Ma in every book but especially that one and Plum Creek - I can't imagine having to live in a dugout of all places with small kids and have a baby (not included in the books). I mean, it's bad enough without children! And The Long Winter - that must have been terrifying; trying to keep a routine and everyone optimistic and stopping Pa from going on some crazy quest to find wheat. Pa is a whole new kind of figure on reread; I used to think he was so fun as a kid and now I think he was insanely irresponsible and a little (or a lot) cruel for making Ma leave her family and community and drag his family across unsettled land for years. Didn't he know about the grasshopper situation?! I'm pretty sure he was given a heads-up, either by the guy who sold him the land or by the people leaving it. And then he makes everyone move whenever he gets bored anyway!
I remember feeling so betrayed when I found out Laura was a Libertarian and big time conservative, even moreso when I found out her parents took money from the government for Mary's school and just prairie life in general. What gives, Laura?! I always wondered if anyone ever brought that up to her. This turned out to be a longer comment than planned, but thanks so much for the post!
And that’s even without mentioning: Mary becoming blind, due complications of scarlet fever (I.e. what can follow a strep infection without antibiotics). Ma & Pa losing their baby son traumatically due to illness, and Laura later traumatically losing her baby son (possibly due to a seizure, but who knows.) Laura’s husband becoming permanently disabled due to diphtheria (now there’s a vaccine) as well as one or both of them possibly becoming infertile (they believed) since they were unable to have more children afterward. Under such circumstances, I can’t imagine being beautifully “in the moment” with my children vs. constantly worried. But sure, let’s drink raw milk and forget about vaccines…
I'm reading Prairie Fires right now and it is BRUTAL. Every page of the first half is like, total devastation for her family.
I was gonna say, you can tell that the folks romanticizing the OG old west homestead life have not actually read a book about it. *heavy sigh*
Yes! I read the Little House books growing up and they weren't my favorites (I was more of a Betsy-Tacy, All-of-a-Kind Family kid!), but it's fascinating to read how when Wilder started writing professionally, she did exactly what the newspapers did when she was a little girl (and earlier!) and they were trying to get white families to move West, glamorizing/romanticizing the lifestyle and insisting that you could totally do it with hard work, when she KNEW that no matter how hard most people worked, they couldn't.
(A few other thoughts about this book!)
I thought it was the right choice and so powerful to start with the history of Indigenous peoples in the West. The other thing that I didn't know anything about but that blew my mind was how much the clearing of the forests and plains at this time impacted the climate and the soil, and actually made it harder to farm. Like, I KNOW that that happens if you clear the natural ecosystems, but I definitely tend to think of climate change as an even more recent phenomenon.
And lastly, I highlighted a quote from Grover Cleveland about how the business of government wasn't to support its people, something like that. TELL ME ABOUT IT, SIR.
I loved both the Betsy-Tacy and All of a Kind Family books, and I wish they had as much popularity as the Little House books. Maybe it's because Michael Landon didn't make a sappy TV series out of them, and I should probably be grateful for that.
And like, those are also both romanticized versions of what it was like in those places and at those times. All-of-a-Kind Family in particular—like, it was definitely not that lovely to grow up on the Lower East Side in the tenements. There’s a book out there about Sydney Taylor that I want to get ahold of next!
My grandfather was the basis for the Tom Slade character in the Betsy-Tacy books. Life was definitely much harder than Lovelace depicted. But writers are allowed to fictionalize their own lives a bit.
Oh, totally! I just wanted to be clear that I don’t necessarily think Betsy-Tacy or All-of-a-Kind are more realistic depictions of the past than Little House.
Also, super cool about your grandfather!
This was so fascinating! Reading this made me think about the extra layer of “manifest destiny” indoctrination we received as Mormons in Utah. For starters, manifest destiny is basically the plot of the Book of Mormon. One of the central takeaways from the Book of Mormon is that Native Americans were cursed by God for their wickedness and need to be saved by white Christians in the modern era. Also, each summer LDS teenagers cosplay the pioneer trek across the country, dressing up in pioneer outfits and pushing handcarts for a week while working in assigned “families.” I know the racist and whitewashed “cowboy and Indian” narrative runs deep nationwide, but the level of indoctrination re: pioneer heritage/manifest destiny runs particularly deep for Mormons. Each year Utah celebrates a state holiday called Pioneer Day. When we spent a year of school learning about Utah history, a disproportionate amount was spent on pioneers. We were raised to be so proud of our pioneer heritage. And yes, very conveniently missing from that indoctrination was the truth about how Mormon pioneers killed and drove Native Americans from their land. Also missing was the truth that many of these pioneer women whom Neeleman romanticizes were spiritually coerced into miserable polygamous marriages.
On the one hand, it’s weird that Neeleman, an LDS woman, would romanticize the pioneer/frontier life when the death and sacrifice of those people has been drilled into her since she was a child (fuel for the persecution narrative). But on the other, it makes perfect sense because we were conditioned literally since infancy to revere these women as the ultimate example of righteousness and sacrifice.
This got me thinking about Ballerina Farm's financials. Obviously it's a private company and they won't release profit data, but given the amount of generational wealth backing Daniel, they probably don't have to make any money at all. Do we know if it's actually profitable?
I’m sure it’s not. Before I knew about the generational wealth, I was mystified as to how they could possibly survive on the income from their farm. It just didn’t make any sense. Then I learned about the JetBlue dollars and it all came together.
RUNNING to get Prairie Fires from the library today. As usual, reading this newsletter makes me feel smarter, more literate and also gives me things to read that won't make me brain dead! :)
This was excellent Sara! I also loved Prairie Fires and the Wilder podcast. As a kid growing up in the PNW we were particularly sold on the romanticism of the Oregon Trail and pioneers making their way West and there was ZERO discussion about how those settlers were stealing land from Indigenous peoples in some truly heinous ways. I too loved the Little House books growing up and it has been kind of mind blowing as an adult to understand the true story behind them, especially their use as Libertarian propaganda.
Side note, I would love for you to do an exploration of the "cozy game" genre, particularly all of the farming sims out there, and how it intersects with this current moment of longing for a "simpler" time. I am admittedly a fan of these games myself, but all of them follow a very similar formula where you play a homesteading farmer who eventually marries and has a kid. A lot of these games are not made in the U.S. (the ur-example, Harvest Moon, was developed in Japan), but they have definitely exploded in popularity here and there is now a whole category of cozy game influencers, many of whom are distinctly cottagecore/trad wife adjacent. Idk, there might be nothing here but it's something I've been noodling on.
If you need a pretty realistic frontier woman period film fix, I highly recommend the 1979 movie Heartland starting Conchata Ferrell and Rip Torn, inspired by a true story and based on “Letters of a Woman Homesteader.” It’s currently included with Prime Video. Heads up - there’s a pig slaughtering scene that’s rough to watch.
I'm currently reading Prairie Fires and while I really appreciate the research and thoughtfulness I am occasionally flummoxed by simple errors. At one point she is listing the belongings Laura and Manly auction in order to leave the Dakotas, she lists two two-year-old fillies, which she identifies as "these are their riding ponies." No, they're not. First, these horses are too young, and second we know that the riding ponies were bought when the Wilders were newly-weds, some years previous. I know it's nitpicky but some editor should have caught that. It starts to make the reader distrust everything.