This was a very well-researched piece. It goes into extensive detail about LIW and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lance. My only issue was the way the author interchanges the use of the first and last names, making it difficult to know to whom she is referring. She will call Rose or Laura by their first names in one sentence and their last names in the next (also making it confusing when she references their husbands by the last names). All in all, this was a very enlightening read.

The studious attention to the real life is amazing.

As a child, I was devoted to the Little House books. I had both the paperbacks and hardbacks. There was a time in my life that I never went anywhere without one of the books in my hands. But slowly, over the years, I stopped carrying them around. I had grown up and learned more about the larger world, and that it’s best not to idealize anything too much. Caroline Fraser isn’t reporting anything that hasn’t already been known about Laura Ingalls Wilder, or her daughter. What Fraser has done is write a very engaging, factual biography bursting with details set against the historical period of her subjects. In my late teens I had heard about Grace Wilder Lane’s extremist, reactionary right-wing beliefs and in my early twenties I first found out that the books weren’t exactly written by Laura Ingalls Wilder alone, and that she most likely had some sort of help from Lane. Learning those things didn’t dim the light of the Little House books for me, because the Little House books belonged to my childhood and will forever stay there. I’ll never be able to read the books again with the same perspective as I did when I first read them, because I’ve matured. I’ve learned as an adult that people are complex. They have many sides and no one can be refreshing as a summer’s breeze all the time. People have faults and some people have very big faults, it’s part of being human. Caroline Fraser has held nothing back in her biography and for some people it might be too much if they prefer their facts a little less honest.

An expected dishonest diatribe.

Interesting information throughly mixed with the author's opinions. Fraser's contempt for both Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter is quite obvious. Wilder's stories are wonderful, and much beloved by generations; whether or not they are 100% true does not change that one iota. Wilder did not set out to write factual history, but to create wonderful stories for children that honored her family. Fraser's attitude of castigating Wilder and Lane for their writing process and accuracy is just silly. Still, the book contains very interesting information if you can ignore the author's bias.