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A Wilder Rose

Susan Wittig Albert (Goodreads Author)

3.60 · Rating details · 2,949 ratings · 538 reviews

In 1928, Rose Wilder Lane—world traveler, journalist, much-published magazine writer—returned from an Albanian sojourn to her parents’ Ozark farm. Almanzo Wilder was 71, Laura 61, and Rose felt obligated to stay and help. To make life easier, she built them a new home, while she and Helen Boylston transformed the farmhouse into a rural writing retreat and filled it with ...more

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Paperback, 288 pages

Published September 2013 by Persevero Press (first published August 28th 2013)

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Jul 28, 2013 Margitte rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013-releases, historical-fiction, reviewed, netgalley, women-s-fiction

A Wilder Rose
Rose Wilder Lane, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Their Little Houses - by Susan Wittig Albert.

The novel is based on the lives of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane and highlights the years between 1928 and 1939. A more compelling, fascinating blend of fact and fiction could not have been written by these two remarkable women behind "Little House on the Prairie" and the rest of the books in the Little House Series.

"Sometimes we need to use fiction to tell the truth. ...more

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Jun 26, 2013 Wendy McClure rated it liked it

A Wilder Rose is a novel about the decade Rose Wilder Lane spent working with her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, on the manuscripts that became the Little House books—which were published under Wilder’s name, even though Lane did much to shape and improve them.

Those who’ve read extensively about the lives of these two women (especially William Holtz’s biography of Lane, The Ghost in the Little House) are already familiar with this story, but in A Wilder Rose, Susan Wittig Albert casts it as a A Wilder Rose is a novel about the decade Rose Wilder Lane spent working with her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, on the manuscripts that became the Little House books—which were published under Wilder’s name, even though Lane did much to shape and improve them.

Those who’ve read extensively about the lives of these two women (especially William Holtz’s biography of Lane, The Ghost in the Little House) are already familiar with this story, but in A Wilder Rose, Susan Wittig Albert casts it as a novel, building on facts to create a version told by Rose herself. The source material Albert drew from is extensive—Rose (yes, I’m switching to first names here) left behind a considerable collection of journals and letters that detail her life on a near-daily basis. Some readers will recognize lines quoted directly from the real-life Rose, and events mentioned in the Holtz book are related in first-person.

I found A Wilder Rose to be both fascinating and frustrating. As a writer and editor I loved the glimpses into the publishing world of the 1930s and reading about Rose’s working life, which was equal parts literary ambition and desperate hustle to pay the bills. I think for the most part Albert succeeds in bringing “Rose’s side” to a wider audience, but I found myself wishing she’d take more advantage of fiction’s possibilities—she colors within the lines, so to speak, in her portrait of Rose.

The book purports to show that Rose deserves at least as much credit for the Little House series as her mother does, and Albert relies on the material archived letters and correspondence to make that point. But for all the research, A Wilder Rose never fully convinces, because it lacks the same thing that’s missing among the harder evidence supporting Rose’s role in creating the Little House books—the sense that Rose herself was very much engaged with these stories on some level.

As Albert diligently shows us, Rose recorded only her frustration with working on the Little House books, complaining in her letters and journals that they took her away from her own writing; fans of the books are left to accept that the stories they loved and experienced so deeply were co-authored by someone who considered them a miserable chore. Yet anyone who has read the biographies has wondered how much of Rose is in the Little House books—did she, inadvertently or otherwise, express or work through her feelings about her own impoverished childhood and her fraught relationship with her mother? For the Little House books to have—as so many readers testify—such a deep sense of presence, it seems she must have. It’s an interesting literary question, and I wish Albert had used her license as a fiction writer to explore that, rather than simply animating Rose’s biography and giving many readers what they already know.

Unexplored as well is Rose’s later-life relationship with the Little House books—her curious insistence in the 1960s that the books were true and that her mother wrote every word; the complicated feelings she must have had when her mother’s legacy began to eclipse her own. Considering Albert’s focus and her interest in relationships between truth and fiction, these omissions make the book feel incomplete.

Nonetheless A Wilder Rose still serves as a very engaging, non-academic introduction to the Little House authorship discussion, and as a sort-of biography of Rose that’s much far more readable and enjoyable than The Ghost in the Little House. (It’s an interesting time to be reading about Rose and the Little House books—the publication of A Wilder Rose is being followed by two very different books titled Pioneer Girl: one is the long-awaited annotated version of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s adult memoir, and the other is a novel by Bich Minh Nguyen that considers Rose’s life in ways that are wildly imaginary yet satisfying. Both will be interesting counterparts to this book.) As A Wilder Rose shows, Rose Wilder Lane deserves to be more widely known, and so much about her remains a mystery.
...more

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Sep 08, 2014 ``Laurie Henderson rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: american-pioneers, history, laura-ingalls-wilder, nonfiction, biography, westward-expansion

I'm a little sad and disappointed after reading this book. First off I did enjoy learning all about Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder the author of the Little House Books.

The author's premise is that Rose did most of the writing of the Little House Books; while Laura just wrote down her memories with Rose editing and expanding upon them.
The author was not content with stopping there though and continues on to present Rose as the much put upon daughter of LIW who was ...more

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Mar 03, 2015 Magdalena aka A Bookaholic Swede rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2015

Laura Ingalls Wilder, a name most of probably recognize, either becomes of her books, or the TV-series, or both. Ingalls Wilder is probably one of the most known children author thanks to her fictional retelling of her childhood. But, what not many people know is that without her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane is it a strong possibility that the never would have been any books.

Susan Wittig Albert has written a book about Rose Wilder Lane life and how it came to be that she ghostwrote the Laura ...more

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Nov 16, 2016 Clif Hostetler rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: biography

This book is a novelized biography of Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder who is the credited author of the Little House on the Prairie series of children's books. Over time critics and historians have come to believe that Rose's involvement in helping her mother write the Little House series exceeded that of editor, that in reality Rose filled the role of what would generally be considered "ghostwriter." My interest of this controversy is what prompted me to read this book. ...more

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Mar 26, 2015 Becky Harris rated it did not like it

This was pretty awful. I read that Albert self-published because, in her words, "publishers were afraid fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder would be too upset by the book". (The book takes the stance that Rose Wilder Lane co-authored the Little House books). I think she had to self-publish because it is not well written. There is no character development and the book is a series of " I did this, and then I did that". None of the characters are fleshed out and there is no real plot. Lane is a ...more

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Mar 03, 2015 Mauoijenn rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015-rc, womanhood-friends-motherhood, just-4-thought, touchy-feel-good, arc-first-2read, net-galley-book

This was a nice book about how the Little House on the Prairie books came about. I remember my mother reading these to my sister and I when we were growing up. It was an interesting to learn Wilder's daughter really shaped the books into what they became. A very good read for fans of Wilder's books.

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Nov 07, 2017 Rachel Aranda rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: gave-away-or-returned, ebooks

This was a disappointing read for me, and I'm glad I didn't buy this book like I was planning to. I'm a big fan of both Laura Ingalls Wilder's stories and Rose Wilder Lane's writings. If ghost writing happened at least it was all in the family. This book was just not as well-written as it could be; I can see why publishers didn't want to take her on as a client since it was all so negative. Pretty much all the characters were shown in their worst light. Honestly I wonder if Ms. Wittig Albert ...more

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Oct 06, 2013 Whitney (First Impressions Reviews) rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2013, historical-fiction, jan-2014-review, arc

I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series growing up. Twenty years later, I still set aside time for Hallmark's Little House on the Prairie Marathons and am just as enraptured by her books as I was at age eight. It recently came out the Laura's daughter Rose may have been the steamroller behind the writing. Between my nostalgic love and curiosity by this new snippet of information the novel, A Wilder Rose grabbed my interest.

During a rewrite of By the Shores of Silver Lake Rose takes ...more

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Jun 21, 2013 Ann rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A must-read for anyone who, like many of my generation, was obsessed with the Little House series before it became a TV juggernaut. Just as the books are a fictionalized account of Laura's childhood, this is a fictionalized account of how the LH books very likely came to be. Is the story true? I can't judge, but after reading Susan Wittig Albert's imagined account, I find myself wanting to read Rose's books, if only to see how they compare the books "written" by her mother.

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Jun 15, 2013 Kathleen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Susan Wittig Albert has done a masterful work with the two subjects of her book, Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane. It is a novel, but a novel with facts. In her very fine readers companion to A Wilder Rose, Albert says " Writing novels about real people can be a tricky business"

What can be so tricky about it, you might well ask? Laura Ingalls Wilder's stories about a time gone by are now a fabric of our society, part legend and part of our childhood. Let me let Laura ...more

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Aug 02, 2013 Katherine L rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction

Brings William Holtz's academic biography of Rose Wilder Lane to vivid fictional life, telling the story of two strong women who collaborated to develop the "Little House" books.

Like many, I read and re-read the "Little House" books, and believed that they were memoir, not fiction. As I grew older, I happened on bits of debate about the extent to which the stories were exaggerated for dramatic effect, but never seriously questioned the fundamental truth of the stories. I also learned that that ...more

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Mar 26, 2019 Sherry Sharpnack rated it really liked it · review of another edition

In this NOVEL about the writing of the “Little House” books, Ms. Albert gives a glossy version of the complicated truth about the actual authorship from Rose Wilder Lane’s viewpoint. Ms. Lane tells this story to an admirer of hers, an aspiring journalist, who helps Ms Lane w/ daily activities at her house in Connecticut in 1939, the eve of the outbreak of WWII. I feel that the jumping back-and-forth from the 1939 interaction to the actual story interrupts the flow of the actual story.

What is the In this NOVEL about the writing of the “Little House” books, Ms. Albert gives a glossy version of the complicated truth about the actual authorship from Rose Wilder Lane’s viewpoint. Ms. Lane tells this story to an admirer of hers, an aspiring journalist, who helps Ms Lane w/ daily activities at her house in Connecticut in 1939, the eve of the outbreak of WWII. I feel that the jumping back-and-forth from the 1939 interaction to the actual story interrupts the flow of the actual story.

What is the story? Ms. Lane was born to a young, dirt-poor mother in the very early years of her parents’ marriage. She is very precocious, and claims to remember burning down her parents’ house at two-plus years old. This guilt warps her relationships w/ her parents from then on. You get a big dose of Rose’s self-pity about growing up poor doing hard work on the farm, Rocky Ridge. She moves to KC at 17, after finishing high school in Louisiana w/ her aunt EJ, made famous in the “Little House” books as the spinster school teacher, Eliza Jane Wilder. She moves all around the country, and then the world, as a journalist/ghostwriter. The first section of the book is actually about her living w/ a friend in Albania. This friend moves back to the Mizzou farm w/ her when they have to leave Albania. Rose’s mother, Mama Bess, is painted as a disagreeable woman much too concerned about what her small-town neighbors think about Rose and Rose’s friends/lifestyle. Rose is stuck at the farm b/c of the stock market crash in 1929 and subsequent depression. Mama Bess presents her w/ a stack of the now-famous “Indian Chief” tablets filled w/ her life stories that she has named “Pioneer Girl.” (This was published recently in a lovely edition.). Rose now has a dilemma: she knows that the story is too rough and wooden to get an agent interested, yet she wants Mama Bess to feel good about being an author. So what to do? Mama Bess is adamant that she doesn’t want to write “fiction;” she wants her life story to be “truthful.” Admirable, but not saleable, in Rose’s opinion, nor her literary agent’s, as it turns out. Mama Bess reluctantly agrees to some editing, after the agent suggest writing the Big Woods’ stories as their own book. Rose edits the stories and expands them w/ dialogue, and the book gets published.

Rose now has a serious dilemma b/c her mother now has a three-book contract. Rose will obviously have to continue her serious editing of the stories w/o any credit for doing so. Mama Bess won’t even READ the books after their final editing, so Rose can’t teach her how to write what sells! Rose also has her own publishing pressures, b/c they all have to pay the bills somehow. She writes her two most critically-acclaimed books herself during these years. Between editing her Mom’s books (which end up being a series of EIGHT books!) writing her own, and having a social/family life, Rose is a very busy woman, whose days/work are constantly interrupted by her lonely, interfering mother! Rose’s post-1939 life is summarized in the epilogue, so you really only get a glimpse of her and her parents anti-FDR, anti New Deal feelings.

If you want a well-documented, factual reading on the Lane/Wilder relationship, w/ all its warts and full political rants, please read Caroline Fraser’s excellent “Prairie Fire: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder,” winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize.
You’ll get a fuller understanding of the complicated relationship between fiction and autobiography in the “Little House” books. Read this book for fun, but take Rose’s self-pity w/ a grain of salt. ...more

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Apr 13, 2017 Kressel Housman rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, little-house

In the Team Laura vs. Team Rose debate, author Susan Wittig Albert is decidedly on Team Rose. Based on William Holtz’s biography The Ghost in the Little House as well as Rose’s journals, she has fictionalized the years in which Rose lived on Rocky Ridge Farm with her aging parents and worked on her mother’s novels. I’d read the Holtz biography, but not the journals, so while the novel seemed accurate based on what I know, much of it seemed like speculation that only the journals can ...more

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Dec 30, 2013 Sue rated it liked it

Shelves: booksiveread

What did I think? It was an interesting novel about 10 years in Rose Wilder Lane's life, the years that she moved her parents into a house that she built for them so she could take over the family farm house, where she could write and entertain her female friends. There is an air of mystery around Rose's relationship with her friend Troub -- I kept thinking of the relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok. (Oh, wouldn't Rose the Roosevelt Hater love that comparison.)

The focus of What did I think? It was an interesting novel about 10 years in Rose Wilder Lane's life, the years that she moved her parents into a house that she built for them so she could take over the family farm house, where she could write and entertain her female friends. There is an air of mystery around Rose's relationship with her friend Troub -- I kept thinking of the relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok. (Oh, wouldn't Rose the Roosevelt Hater love that comparison.)

The focus of the novel, though, is Rose's participation in the creation of the Little House novels. In particular, with the first four books, with just a mention of By the Shores of Silver Lake at the beginning that gets the novel started. The story is meant to show just how much of the beloved books are Rose's work, and how little of the writing was her mother's, Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I enjoyed the book. Rose was an interesting character, and the point of the novel was to show the classic mother-daughter struggle that defined the relationship between these two women. I liked that it took place in a very defined period of time and gave some insight to life as a writer during the Depression. (However, I would have liked some more in-depth details about Rose's fiction. Was everything serialized or just some pieces? She seemed to get the same kind of pay for everything she wrote, no matter the length.)

However, there were a lot of things about this book that really bugged me. It draws heavily from The Ghost in the Little House by William Holtz, a book I read when it first came out. The reason I didn't like that book was because the unfiltered contempt of LIW, the person and the writer. I didn't understand why there was so much anger there. I got the exact same feeling when I read A Wilder Rose. Albert the author seems to want to paint Rose as this wonderful, caring person and writer in contrast to the overbearing and manipulative Mama Bess, as Rose called her mother. Albert did a good job as painting LIW as a hateful, spiteful person, but she also did a good job setting up Rose as the one who is overbearing and manipulative. There were no scenes that show them in a truly loving relationship. Nor were there any scenes that gave the reader any idea why Rose would be drawn to live in Mansfield for years. This is fiction, Mrs. Albert. It was okay to stretch the truth and create something. The irony here is that while the character Rose is talking about the importance of adding fictional touches to the Little House books to expand the story and fill in the holes for the reader, Albert ignores that advice. Luckily, I could fill in some of the holes because I know the stories of LIW's and RWL's lives well enough. However, I suspect that the goal here was to make the book appear to be nonfiction. I thought the book itself had the look and feel of a college-level textbook, the texture of the cover, the extreme white pages and the font, even the size/shape of the book is more in line with the women's studies and political science academic books I have on my shelf rather than the softcover novels I buy.

That said, I still don't understand the seething animosity toward LIW in books that focus on the life of Rose. Was she the horrible person they make her out to be or is this a contrived caricature to reinforce the idea that LIW wasn't the lovable little old lady who wrote those endearing children's novels? But I think Albert glossed over a lot of the realities here. In other books, the reaction Laura had after Rose lifted Pioneer Girl's story for her own book was not meek and mild as this book portrayed it. It also doesn't explain why the Little House books read so much smoother than anything I've read of Rose's.

I'm in the camp that believes Laura wrote the books and Rose provided a heavy dose of editing, possibly more than she needed to. I've never met a writer yet who wasn't benefited by a good editor. ...more

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Feb 06, 2014 Lori rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, historical

I read this book on my kindle. this is about Rose Wilder Lane and her famous mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder. it mostly follows the life of Rose wilder Lane. she was a known writer. who often was a ghost writer for famous celebrities and other authors. it has been rumored for years that Rose Lane helped write her mother Laura ingalls Wilder with her famous children' books about her life growing up as a pioneer girl. Laura was known to tell stories about her childhood and was encouraged to write ...more

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Jul 20, 2013 Jeanette rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I never read the Little House books and barely watched the tv show growing up but of course, Laura Ingalls Wilder is an icon of children's literature. Who knew that her daughter was more of the driving force behind the books, which won an incredible number of awards? Albert has used in-depth research to tell a story steeped in historical facts. The relationship between Rose and Laura hit a little too close to home; mothers and daughters are often competitors. Rose's life had so many interesting ...more

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Jul 08, 2013 Peggy rated it liked it

Shelves: literary-biography, little-house

As a lifelong Little House fan, I found this fascinating, although it paints both Rose and her mother as somewhat unsympathetic. I'm not sure about the extent of the collaboration between Laura and Rose; since this book depicts Rose doing most of the writing, I'm now reading Pamela Smith Hill's LIW biography to sort of balance things out.

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Jun 12, 2013 Sarah rated it it was amazing

Like many a young girl, I treasured the classic historical novels of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I used to read the books over and over, captivated by the descriptions of American frontier life, the optimistic themes of family togetherness and survival amid challenging circumstances, and the appealing character of spunky Laura, the author’s younger self.

And, like many other children, I had read the final book, The First Four Years, with a sense of puzzlement. It lacked the sparkle of the others. The ...more

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Jun 28, 2013 Erin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historic-fiction-1900s

Find this and other reviews at: http://flashlightcommentary.blogspot....

I was eight when I read the Little House books. My mother gave me a full set of hard covers and we read them aloud. From time to time I've revisited the material, picking up a biography I happened across or checking out one of the My First Little House Books for my own daughter. I love these stories but even so, I wasn't entirely sold on reading Susan Wittig Albert's A Wilder Rose.

I'd never read the author before so I knew ...more

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Aug 30, 2013 Umm rated it it was amazing

I admit, I approached this book with some trepidation, being a diehard Laura Ingalls Wilder/Little House fan. Like millions of other girls, I wanted to be, if not Laura herself, then her best friend, sharing in her adventures as well as the many times of love and laughter she shared with her close knit family. That being said, though, it never bothered me overmuch when I read that she may not have written the books totally on her own. It was the spirit of the girl in the stories that I loved, ...more

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Apr 27, 2015 Jacqie rated it did not like it

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

And honestly? This is a book that felt like a very rough cut. I've read a bit of Susan Wittig Albert before, and while her mysteries aren't my cup of tea, I had no reason to doubt her writing ability. Like most women who grew up in my generation, I've got a bit of a soft spot for the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder ( or by Rose Wilder Lane?) and so I was interested to read some background about how the ...more

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Oct 07, 2014 Beth rated it liked it

Shelves: own-on-kindle

This book is about the writing and publishing of the "Little House on The Prairie" books that like so many other little girls, I read and loved. Supposedly written by Laura Ingalls Wilder, it turns out that the books were pretty much rewritten by her daughter Rose although this was not publically known at the time.

Although this aspect of the story was interesting, what I found much more interesting was the time period in which this book takes place - in the 1920s through the late 1930s. Rose ...more

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Jul 09, 2013 Melissa McCauley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Like so many American girls, I grew up a rabid fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books (despite the cheesy television series). Over the years, I read many books about Laura, and begged my long-suffering husband to detour on road-trips so that I could make pilgrimages to Laura’s houses. (You’re a saint, honey!) But I never knew much about Rose (and frankly wasn’t that interested… she didn’t bring in the whole woodpile during a blizzard)

I wondered why the literary style of “The First Four Years” was ...more

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Sep 05, 2015 Girl with her Head in a Book rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: wild-west, 2015-challenge, american

Another week, another Little House story. This one however has something of a twist, aiming to tell the story of the girl described as ‘the ghost in the little house’ – Rose Wilder Lane. A fashionable recent theory has it that Laura Ingalls Wilder did not write the books which bear her name, that instead she provided the facts and that they were instead ghost-written by her daughter. In this novel, Albert takes this theory as fact and draws together the story of how this might have come to be. Another week, another Little House story. This one however has something of a twist, aiming to tell the story of the girl described as ‘the ghost in the little house’ – Rose Wilder Lane. A fashionable recent theory has it that Laura Ingalls Wilder did not write the books which bear her name, that instead she provided the facts and that they were instead ghost-written by her daughter. In this novel, Albert takes this theory as fact and draws together the story of how this might have come to be. Having recently read Pioneer Girl, which supported the idea of Laura being the main author, it was interesting to read the other side. It is doubtful that we will ever be certain where the truth lay but A Wilder Rose is nonetheless an interesting and often affecting novel.

The novel begins with Rose in middle-age, groaning as she receives another of her mother’s manuscripts in the mail – this time, The Shores of Silver Lake. One of her many long-term house guests tells her earnestly that her name ought to be on those books given how sizeable her contribution as co-author, but Rose explains that to do so would damage the reputation of the earlier books in the series. Through flashback she explains how she became her mother’s ghost-writer, how ‘Mama Bess’ became famous through her daughter’s hard work.

According to Albert (via Rose), Laura Ingalls Wilder was an oral storyteller who struggled to write down her autobiography in an engaging way. She is also portrayed as an overbearing woman who bickered with her husband, patronised her daughter, believed that she always knew best and who made her husband buy the land in Rocky Ridge even though it was not good for farming. Mama Bess is mean.

Rose describes how the crash of 1929 wiped out much of her savings and forced her home to Rocky Ridge. From there, she had to rebuild and start over in an economy that could no longer afford to pay top dollar for stories. Still, I found A Wilder Rose more interesting for the light it shed on Laura’s later life and also for aspects of Rose’s life with which I had been previously unfamiliar rather than for its emotional focus. From the very beginning, I felt that Albert oversold the idea of Laura as the Big Mean Mommy. Rose Wilder Lane would not have been the first and was certainly not the last daughter to have a complicated relationship with her mother – as a woman who led a rather unconventional life by the standards of the time, it would have been odd if she had submitted meekly to her mother’s advice at all times. Albert makes Mama Bess an unremitting source of negativity, drip-drip-dripping away her unpleasantness, particularly when things start to go well, yet in Pioneer Girl, there is clear and positive communication between the two, with Laura noting when describing spring roses that these were what Rose was named after. It seemed very cruel to negate the love between mother and daughter for a novel.

Certain key questions are neglected which I felt would have made for a more even-handed novel. In Pioneer Girl, Pamela Hill describes Laura’s hurt when she discovers that Rose had pilfered certain aspects of her autobiography for her own adult novel, since she felt that her mother’s writing was only fit for children’s fiction. Rose found creative inspiration of her own from her mother’s project and was unafraid to manipulate Laura to please herself – yet such a reproach is only touched on in A Wilder Rose to illustrate how little Mama Bess understands of writing. Similarly, Rose never comments on what it must have felt like to see her mother’s writing soar in popularity while her own slipped into obscurity. Today, despite her undoubted talents, Rose Wilder Lane is only famous as Laura’s daughter – given her certainty in her own superior talents as writer, what must this have felt like to realise?

There is a certain put-upon smugness to Albert’s afterword where she notes that Almanzo Wilder told his daughter that his life had been mainly made up of ‘disappointments’ and that the world began to suspect the truth of the authorship of Little House series when The First Four Years was discovered after Laura’s death. Its ‘stumbling prose’ apparently exposed the fact that Laura was no writer – never mind the fact that she had written it in her late eighties, a stage of life when few writers produce their best work and that it was published as a markedly incomplete draft. It is not the best of the series – but it is unfinished. Like an unpolished demo session from a prematurely dead rock star, one cannot judge it alongside the rest of the artist’s portfolio. Albert tells the reader sternly in her afterword that it is possible to still enjoy the Little House series while accepting the ‘truth’ about who truly wrote them.

Rose Wilder was a remarkable woman – she lived for years in Albania, she was incredibly generous with her money and time, having three surrogate ‘sons’ at different points in her life, she found success in a male-dominated industry, yet in A Wilder Rose, she often sounds like a petulant teenager moaning about being grounded. There are interesting moments, such as those describing her research trips to discover more about the state of farming and the development of her own political leanings but there is not enough of this. One farmer tells her that her recent novel Let The Hurricane Roar tells a lie in that a hardy attitude is enough to face down life’s tribulations – as he looks around his recently decimated farm, he knows that this is not true. As Rose considers that her ‘optimistic’ story may be making people feel that those in the farmer’s situation should be able to find their own way out of their problems, she feels guilt-stricken. Another thought-provoking moment under-explored.

I felt truly irritated by Albert’s implication that Rose wrote the Little House books under sufferance, annoyed to be losing months of her own work – anyone who has ever read them know that the books have such heart, something I do not believe would have been possible in the way that Albert described. The books are Laura’s story and it is possible that she consulted with her daughter, particularly in the early volumes, but their undoubted presence comes from the Mama Bess who Albert so despises. I remember how Rose described her mother in her companion segment to The First Four Years, giving us a vivid outsider view of a mother with such long hair who whistled while she worked and was adored by both husband and daughter. No doubt there were conflicts, all families have those but to suggest that Laura was so much less than she was feels spiteful. I enjoyed A Wilder Rose for what it taught me about the facts of Rose’s life but feel that Pioneer Girl makes a truly scholarly attempt to tell the truth about Laura and her family. ...more

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Oct 16, 2017 Jeannie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

She was her Mother's Rose

I really enjoyed this book. First of all because as a girl I was a fan of the "Little House Books.".Yes there is a lot of controversy over the ghost writing that Laura Ingall's
daughter Rose did on the books. But , when it comes down to it, the stories , experiences, and family tragedies were Laura's. Just because her daughter was better at constructing a story , or better at making it flow, did not mean that she was the author of her mothers books. In my opinion she did ...more

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Jun 27, 2015 Amanda rated it it was amazing

This weekend, I devoured A Wilder Rose by Susan Wittig Albert. I think I started it on my Thursday morning commute and finished it by Sunday night. I loved it for many reasons and highly recommend it.

I picked up the book because I was very interested in reading Pioneer Girl, the annotated autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder that was also released this year, but it is quite expensive and not available on Kindle. I’m still interested in reading it, but mainly because I would like to see the This weekend, I devoured A Wilder Rose by Susan Wittig Albert. I think I started it on my Thursday morning commute and finished it by Sunday night. I loved it for many reasons and highly recommend it.

I picked up the book because I was very interested in reading Pioneer Girl, the annotated autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder that was also released this year, but it is quite expensive and not available on Kindle. I’m still interested in reading it, but mainly because I would like to see the differences in Laura and Rose’s points of view. I also picked it up because I grew up with the Little House books and they are one of the reasons I have always wanted to be a writer. So here are the reasons I loved this book:

1) It makes me want to read more by and about Rose Wilder Lane. The book only covers Rose’s life from around 1928-1939, but her life before and after that time was also fascinating! Rose escaped farm life at only 17, but she didn’t just make it to the big city. She traveled all over Europe, mainly spending time in Albania, but also France, Germany, and parts of Russia. She also wrote and wrote and wrote. She wrote about her travels and politics for magazines and she wrote biographies for interesting people of her time like Herbert Hoover and Charlie Chaplin. Many of her writings are now not so easy to find and are not available digitally, but I would love to read them.

2) It makes me want to read more by and about other women writers of her time – which makes me a little mad. Rose was traveling and writing and friends with many other famous and influential writers of her time. Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, and Sinclair Lewis are all name-dropped in the book, but so are many women I had never heard of. Helen Boylston, Genevieve Parkhurst, Catherine Brody, Mary Margaret McBride, Norma Lee Browning and others mentioned in the book were all best selling authors in the early and mid-20th century…yet not one of these women were on my reading lists as I was getting my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English literature. Granted, 20th century literature was not my focus, but I was still forced to take enough classes in the era to have read all the famous men mentioned above, but not the women. The way women have been systematically erased from history just gets my blood boiling.

3) It taught me a lot about the time period. Again, the 20th century (especially America in the 20th century) is not my focus, but I do love history, so it was interesting to learn more about the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and the New Deal from a first-person account. But it also took a bit of world history at that time into consideration as well. As I mentioned, Rose was extremely well-traveled. She was also very well-informed. This was also a turbulent time in America and in Europe, since the Great Depression was one of the main causes for WWII. It frames the book as not just what was happening to one family in one place in one time, but contextualizes it with what was happening in the rest of the world, which made it much more relevant and interesting.

4) It’s a book about writing. As a writer, it is important to read as a reader, read as a writer, and also read about writing. The book shows the pleasures and the pains involved in being a writer, but mostly the pains. Being a writer is not an easy life – which most writers will tell you but most non-writers will never believe. At one point, Rose is trying to tell her mother just how difficult the life of a writer is, and she says:

It was, I think, a moment of truth for her. Writing isn’t magic, it’s work; earning a living as a writer means showing up at the typewriter every day, whether you feel like it or not. I understood her dilemma: she had to choose between the farmwork and her writing, and that was hard.

But reading about the hardships she faced while trying to be a writer and watching her succeed was very encouraging. I am feeling very energized to work more on my own projects right now.

There are probably more reasons why I loved this book, but this post is long enough. I hope those are enough reasons to convince you to pick it up. Long story short, 5 out of 5 stars. ...more

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Jul 01, 2013 Jenny Q rated it really liked it

Shelves: review-copy, blog-tour

Laura Ingalls Wilder's books were some of my favorites growing up. I'll never forget the day my mom brought home Little House in the Big Woods for me. My mind was opened up to a whole new world. In fact, these books were probably responsible for my lifelong love of historical fiction. As a child, I didn't care who wrote the books or how much was based on fact and how much was fiction, and I was surprised to learn there was a bit of controversy surrounding the authorship of the series. I was Laura Ingalls Wilder's books were some of my favorites growing up. I'll never forget the day my mom brought home Little House in the Big Woods for me. My mind was opened up to a whole new world. In fact, these books were probably responsible for my lifelong love of historical fiction. As a child, I didn't care who wrote the books or how much was based on fact and how much was fiction, and I was surprised to learn there was a bit of controversy surrounding the authorship of the series. I was curious about the woman who is now given much of the credit, though she could never claim it in her lifetime, and I was also wary since I grew up with Half-pint and her family, and worried I would learn something that would tarnish my fond memories. But my fears were for naught. While many memorable moments from Laura's life still live on in my mind, I found her daughter's life to be just as interesting, and though some may feel the two women deceived the world, I am grateful that Laura had a daughter with the skills, connections, and devotion to help bring her mother's stories to life.

A Wilder Rose is a fictionalized memoir, a fascinating look at the life of Rose Wilder Lane, a woman who wrote for some of the biggest publishers and magazines for a living, who moved in a circle of literary icons, who had the freedom to go where she pleased, to experience life and draw from her travels and observations to craft stories that resonated with a nation under duress. Along the way, Rose illustrates how not just her own but also her fellow writers' views changed over the years, and how that affected their work. Rose also illustrates how her relationship with her mother impacted her life and her writing. She and her mother were born of two very different generations, and while at first I hardly recognized Half-pint in the matronly Mama Bess, I soon came to see how her childhood had shaped her into the woman she became.

I really enjoyed this book, though I got a little annoyed at how it skipped around in time, jumping forward and backward, highlighting some moments while sweeping others that I would have liked to read more about under the rug. And I found the story lost some of its steam toward the end when the focus shifted more toward Rose's political views and writings. But I just loved reading about how the Little House series was born, Rose's trials in working with her mother to craft the novels, her life with her parents on their Missouri farm, and how Rose's interactions with everyday Americans struggling to survive during our country's darkest decade inspired her writing and urged her into activism.

If you're looking for a grand, sweeping historical fiction saga, this isn't it. But if you love books and want to get an intimate view of the state of America and the publishing world during the Great Depression, the life of an acclaimed working writer during some of America's best and worst times, and some insight into the mind of one of America's most beloved children's authors in her later years, this is it. ...more

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Jul 08, 2013 Erin rated it really liked it

Shelves: arc-review

Received as a review copy from the author - I'm fascinated by the relationship between Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane and I'm looking forward to reading this.

Thoroughly enjoyed this fictionalized account of the adult lives of Rose Wilder Lane and her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder. William Holtz has already written the definitive scholarly work on Lane's life (the excellent Ghost in the Little House) so Albert wisely takes another route and mirrors what Wilder and Lane did with the Received as a review copy from the author - I'm fascinated by the relationship between Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane and I'm looking forward to reading this.

Thoroughly enjoyed this fictionalized account of the adult lives of Rose Wilder Lane and her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder. William Holtz has already written the definitive scholarly work on Lane's life (the excellent Ghost in the Little House) so Albert wisely takes another route and mirrors what Wilder and Lane did with the Little House series - she fictionalizes real life events which make this akin to a wonderful addition to that series. Holtz book is incredibly detailed and thorough, so this is a more accessible, compulsively readable look at the relationship between mother and daughter, but adheres to the facts in Holtz's book. Lane was an incredibly prolific letter-writer, so there are many records of her adult life; however Albert/Lane gives readers a caution about relying too much on those records, noting "[d]iaries and journals are dangerous because they tend to crystallize passing feelings of discouragement and bewilderment that would otherwise evaporate in the progression of life event, and if they are read by others, by outsiders, they may lead to misunderstandings." (61)

While Rose and her relationship are central to the book, of primary importance here (and also through her adult life) is Rose's relationship with Mama Bess. It's not surprising that the real Laura Ingalls Wilder was far more complicated than she appears in the Little House series and Rose and Laura often had a difficult path, where Rose constantly felt that her mother was dissatisfied with her and her choices - true of so many mothers and daughters so that it's nearly universal when Rose notes, "[i]t was the same kind of thing that had made me so miserable when I was a child and she found fault with my efforts to help her. Do any of us ever outgrow those old childhood hurts, or do they gnaw and fester in our spirits the whole length of our lives?" (168) Combine relationship with the exploration of who really wrote the Little House books (interesting that, for me, I was not the least bit surprised by the revelation - it only made sense to me that Wilder would get lots of help from her professional writer daughter, and I'm not sure that either mother or daughter suffered massive amounts of angst over their choices with regard to the authorship) and any fan will find something to like here. ...more

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Oct 12, 2013 Meg - A Bookish Affair rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, 2013

4.5 stars. Growing up, I read the Little House on the Prairie books over and over again. I loved the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family and their lives on the prairie. I so wanted to be a pioneer when I was little. Those books were probably my first brush with historical fiction, a genre that you all know that I dearly, dearly love. When I got a little older and realized that the books were based on actual stories from Laura's life, I was even more intrigued but I never put much 4.5 stars. Growing up, I read the Little House on the Prairie books over and over again. I loved the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family and their lives on the prairie. I so wanted to be a pioneer when I was little. Those books were probably my first brush with historical fiction, a genre that you all know that I dearly, dearly love. When I got a little older and realized that the books were based on actual stories from Laura's life, I was even more intrigued but I never put much thought into how the books were written. "A Wilder Rose" answers that question.

Rose Wilder, daughter of Laura and Almanzo, was a writer in her own right who took her mother's little house stories and turned them into something that could actually be published and were beloved by so many young readers worldwide. What this book opened my eyes to was just how much Rose had to do with the Little House books. Ms. Albert draws on Rose's real life journal entries and letters between Rose and Laura to shed some light on what really happened with the Little House books. All of the detail is so good and really made this secret history come to life for me!

The mother-daughter relationship in the book between Rose and Laura was absolutely fascinating to me. Rose seems to feel trapped in the Ozarks in many ways. She had a chance to travel the world until the Great Depression hits. She is then forced to go home to her parents, which seems to strain Rose's relationship with her mother even more. Because there is so much good detail, the relationship really feels real!

I didn't know much about Rose at all before reading this book other than the fact that she was the daughter of Laura. I really enjoyed learning more about her. She was a really interesting person in her own right. While her parents had really only stayed in the same places, she absolutely loved to travel and to write. She was also really political, which I thought was interesting to read about. Early 20th century American politics are so great to read about. Things were so different than they are now!

Overall, this was such a fascinating back story to a beloved book series! ...more

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About Susan Wittig Albert

Susan Wittig Albert

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Susan is the author/co-author of biographical/historical fiction, mysteries, and nonfiction.

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