What I'm Reading: The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure

I was one of those girls who dressed up in cast-off long dresses and straw hats and day dreamed about horses and covered wagons. I was mother of the president of a (two person) Laura Ingalls Wilder Fan Club. So no surprise I loved The Wilder Life, in which Wendy McClure not only muses about her childhood adoration of the Little House books, but kind of lives the dream as an adult: buying a butter churn on eBay, which probably cost “enough to pay for one of Mary’s semesters at Iowa College for the Blind” and using it (while watching TV), retracing routes to Laura’s former homesteads (wading in Plum Creek!) -- though hardships include a rental without GPS, interviewing devotees, figuring out the lines between Wilder fact and fiction, and trying to charm her way into an overnight in a dugout.

As a children’s book editor, Wendy is often asked about favorite childhood books and notes that some people nod almost smugly when her answer includes the Little House books. She feels uncomfortable, because of course she’s an adult now, and beyond the sunbonnets and blue skies can see holes, contradictions, and elements of racism, while still holding onto what’s good. She can be crazy about Laura and also irritated by the crankiness of Mrs. Wilder through chapters focusing on particular times, places, or themes, each ending with moving revelations. I expect everyone will have their favorite chapter. As someone who’s read a lot about Laura’s only child, Rose Wilder Lane, I was glad to have company, especially as we found similar things endearing and not-so-much. Wendy gives a brief overview of Rose’s life and suggests that beyond fuzziness re who wrote the books (and she offers evidence about why there should be no dispute about a collaboration) Laura-lovers often dislike Rose most of all because of her sadness. I think she’s right. The Little House books are so much about overcoming disaster and moving on with a good attitude, whereas Rose struggled with depression, which must have been particularly hard in that time and place and living with a chirpy, energetic mom who for all her strengths likely found “moods” pretty hard to understand. Tending to chickens isn’t the cure for all blues.

Just as love holds together the Wilder family through rough weather and roads, the loyalty, humor, and truth-telling of Wendy’s boyfriend forms the heart of this memoir. For Christmas, Chris gives Wendy “The Little House Guidebook,” a travel guide to the homesites, which she “mentally subtitled Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Driving Out to Remote Locations in the Upper Midwest to Find Your Childhood Imaginary Friend but Were Afraid to Ask.” Chris reads some novels for the first time and sometimes joins Wendy on journeys to landmarks, bringing new perspectives and charming us with his willingness to share this passion or obsession, never trying to parse the line between. One of my favorite scenes is when they rent a covered wagon in a South Dakota camp for wanna-be-pioneers and it hails pretty ferociously. It’s not an easy night. In the morning, the first thing Chris says is, “We have to go check on the wheat.”

No wonder there’s a happy ending here, as Wendy finds a sense of place both in the past and present.