Understanding Lena Forbes: The Real Story Behind Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Cousin

Lena Forbes was on my mind for longer than seven years. Sure, that’s the time period when I seriously started researching her and writing about her. There was an enjoyable part, learning more about the entire Laura Ingalls Wilder oeuvre. The first step, since I’d read the Laura books and the many nonfiction books about her, was attending Pioneer Girl Perspectives, the 2017 conference from the State Historical Society of South Dakota. Such great, intelligent talks. Such nice people.

I’ll never forget the talk by Ann Romines, a funny, smart, self-realized woman who said of the Ingalls family: “Think about it: four girls and a woman  in one cabin, and through all those books, not a single word about menstruation.”

That event wasn’t like Laurapalooza (yes, there really is such), where it was more about fandom. I did like talks at the 2017 Laurapalooza from Barb Mayes Boustead and Caroline Fraser–thoughtful, intelligent researchers who told much about the environment surrounding the Ingalls family. But after I saw “Prairie Barbie” at the silent auction, I headed to the bar for a glass of booze.

It’s very difficult to put yourself inside the head of someone and try to write their story as they would have written it. It was easier for Laura Ingalls Wilder. She knew it firsthand, and her daughter/ghostwriter Rose knew how to catch the rhythm of her own mother’s world.

So that’s why it took seven years to research and write. Most of it was writing. I’d start it, stop it, write it, rewrite it, put it away, bring it back out, start over with a new plot, change that plot, and go on and on and on. Finally in the grueling boredom of 2020 did I make major headway. And I wrote three other novels that year. Still, it took until 2025 for it to see the light of day.

I hope my readers like Lena. She was a real person and is alive again in a novel. Her toughness is so compelling in these times. What I dislike most is when people dismiss Lena as “another Laura.” Lena did not have sweet, fiddlin’ Pa, nor Ma in the kitchen making vanity cakes for her lovely little girls. Lena had it tough, and she still made it.

Every writer knows that story, because they’ve lived it. Sure, we all “make it” in different ways. But doing the writing itself is the victory of the soul.