After finishing the official nine-book Little House on the Prairie series, which I read to my family over the course of this past year, I read this short diary that Laura wrote as she, Manly, and Rose Wilder fled the droughts of South Dakota to find greener pastures in Mansfield, Missouri.

I tried reading this journal aloud to my kids, but they weren’t nearly as enthralled with these entries about temperatures and crop yields as they were with the novels. Plus, since we have begun reading Little House on Rocky Ridge by Roger Lea MacBride, I’m finding that much of the same information is shared between the books, only MacBride’s book comes from young Rose’s perspective and in a dramatic format.

Personally, I loved this collection of journal entries, which follow their slow journey from July 17 through August 30, 1894. Through Laura’s eyes and pen, we watch the landscape shift and change from South Dakota through Nebraska and Kansas and into Missouri. I’ve visited all these states before but was never really impressed by any of them, though after reading her descriptions, I think I might enjoy a venture through southeastern Nebraska or western Missouri. As a metal detectorist too, I was pretty impressed with seeing the growth of all these small towns, so long ago before the turn of the previous century. How I’d love to visit old Mansfield, MO, and swing through the yards of those houses on the edge of town! Wishful thinking, but hey, that’s what books are made for.

This book comes in three parts, an introduction or “setting” by Rose Wilder Lane, the journal itself by her mother, and a conclusion, also by Rose. I enjoyed every part of it, and recognizing the fact that Rose lived into her 80s and had shared her sharp recollections of the era with close friends like Roger Lea MacBride, I know that the novelizations that we’re now reading are trustworthy and based more than loosely on the facts of the real Wilder family. Rose doesn’t speak with a writer’s flair in her portions of the book, which is fine. Her paragraphs feel as though they might have been transcribed from a conversation or even a Q&A session, yet the information is solid, interesting, and full of valuable insights from so long ago.

If you’re a fan of the Little House books and have never read this final addition, I highly recommend it. It’s a healthy cap to these most famous of memoirs by a poor American farmer. This is history that I hope our weak and woke nation never erases.

©2020 E.T.

Read More from The Little House Series:

• Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1932)
• Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1933)
• Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1935)
• On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1937)
• By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1939)
• The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1940)
• Little Town on the Prairie Laura Ingalls Wilder (1941)
• These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1943)
• On the Way Home by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1962)
• The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1971)
• Little Farm in the Ozarks by Robert La MacBride (1994)
• Little House on Rocky Ridge by Roger Lea MacBride (1993)
• Confessions of a Prairie B*tch by Alison Arngrim (2010)