William Holtz

I grew up with the Little House books. In fact, I attribute much of my love of reading to the time I spent with Laura and her family as they endured the harshness of life on the prairie. This book is the story of Laura‘s daughter, Rose, who spent her life of “determined ordinariness“ under the shadow of her famous mother. “A Rose in December was much rarer than a rose in June, and must be paid for accordingly.” These words written by Laura Ingalls Wilder about the birth of her daughter Rose on December 5, 1886, set the tone for Rose Wilder Lane’s emotionally crippling childhood about which she wrote, “I hated everything and everybody in my childhood.” After reading the story of her life and about the influence of her mother, I can only conclude that they deserved each other!

The family moved from hard times in South Dakota to even harder times in Southwest Missouri when Rose was a young child. She spent her formative years in the unrelieved poverty of a “country girl” who wore shabby clothes to school and ate butterless bread for lunch. She may have been poor, but she was so precocious that she suffered from writer’s cramp while still in Kindergarten. She was a real challenge to her teachers and was mostly self-taught from the books that opened up the ways of the world and became her companions throughout her life as a lifelong learner.

Rose was a world traveler who made many “little homes” away from her home turf of Rocky Ridge which she relied on as a place to recharge her batteries and bolster her income. She learned that she wasn’t wife material after a brief marriage and a stillborn son. Hpwever, her motherly instincts were aroused and she “adopted” three young men in her mid-years, giving them financial and emotional support. She was a generous person yet her generosity came with conditions and some unhappy results including the depression that plagued her much of her life.

It was interesting to me that Rose and her more famous mother began their writing careers around the same time. Rose wrote quite a few books in her lifetime but none gained the popularity of The Little House series. Laura’s stories were written in a simple random style of memories jotted down and given to Rose for revision. There was much resentment from both mother and daughter about putting Laura’s “music” into Rose’s words yet the bond was strong and Rose was at Mama Bess’s bedside when she died at age 90. Rose continued with her active life immersing herself in politics, even serving as a war correspondent in Vietnam at age 79. She was on the verge of a grand European tour when she died in her sleep at the home of friends in Connecticut at age 81.

That’s the condensed version of the life of Rose Wilder Lane. William Holtz does a commendable job of providing the many details from her letters and diaries to make her fascinating life into a fascinating book. I’m glad the author was able to get her out from under her mother’s shadow so we can read about Rose’s mark on the big world beyond the little house in Missouri.… (mais)

I have heard stories in the past about how Rose Wilder Lane "actually" wrote the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, but nothing about Rose ever compelled me to look into it further. I had watched the TV show, but never read the books, so it didn't really matter to me. Then this book was chosen for the LibraryThing Missouri Readers group read, and I cringed at reading 400 pages about who wrote the Little House books.

That was not what this book was about.

Rose Wilder Lane was a fascinating person in her own right. The author's conclusion is that yes, she did some major editing of the Little House books. But aside from that, she was one of those women of the early 20th century who lived such interesting lives, and did some amazing things. She spent time living in Albania, she supported several children not her own, she built houses for herself and her parents. I don't know that she was a particularly likeable person, and she was extremely opposed to Roosevelt's New Deal (to the point where she refused ration cards during World War II and insisted on living off her own land). The more I read about these women, the less revolutionary the feminist movement seems to me. Feminism may have broken the boundaries set in the 40s and 50s, but the opportunities the women had who came of age earlier in the century just boggles my mind. She had no trouble making her opinions known, and I would be interested in reading some of her books. I may even read the Little House books!

Holtz had a habit of getting a little verbose occasionally, and I didn't care for Rose, but it was a good story about an interesting time in Missouri (and American) history.… (mais)

First things: the writing in this biography is exceptional. After reading (no--plowing through) more biographies than I care to remember written by people who evidently think "anyone" can write a biography, this one is a dream.

RWL was a fascinating woman, and she had a complex and difficult relationship with her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder. I'm sure readers of the Little House series have a certain image of the author and perhaps would rather preserve that image. If so, it's probably best not to read this book. RWL kept diaries and wrote letters that recorded her side of the relationship. "It's amazing how my mother can make me suffer," she wrote. "She made me so miserable when I was a child that I've never gotten over it. I'm morbid. I'm all raw nerves. I know I should be more robust. I shouldn't let her torture me this way and always gain her own ends, through implications that she hardly knows she's using. But I can't help it."

The fact (yes, fact) that Rose worked to get her mother's manuscripts into publishable shape, the fact that her mother so resented her for doing it yet needed her to do it, the fact that working on the Little House books kept Rose from working on her own writing, the fact that the Little House books under her mother's name were wildly successful while Rose struggled with her own writing--all of that makes the difficult relationship between Rose and her mother all the more poignant.

I give this book a 5-star review, but looking back at the notes I made while reading it, I'm remembering that I did have problems in places with the biographer. For example:

The biographer doesn't seem to be very interested in several of Lane's friends: Helen Boylston (he dismisses her enormous success as a young adult fiction writer with only one line); Bessie Beatty, a real eccentric who I was hoping to learn more about; Mary Margaret McBride (another eccentric, fascinating woman; I had the impression while reading the biog that Holtz either didn't know much about her or didn't care).

I don't think Holtz understood the toxic narcissism of Lane's mother--what it took out of Lane to maintain a relationship with her, even after Lane moved to Connecticut, to return to the farm to care for her during her mother's last illness. I also don't think the biographer had much of a sympathetic understanding of Lane's depression, which was a central component to much of her adult life.

I wish Holtz had had more to say about Laura Ingalls Wilder's will. Evidently the library in Mansfield, MO was the recipient of the copyright and income from the Little House books. Really?

In the main, however, this is an excellent biography, and Lane is fortunate in her biographer.

Holtz also published a collection of letters between Rose and Dorothy Thompson which makes fascinating reading. I do wish he had published a general edition of her correspondence, since he believes (and the letters bear this out) that Lane was one of the 20th century's great letter-writers, "incapable of writing a dull line."… (mais)