It would be several years before Williams finished the illustrations for the eight books, but the journey had provided a powerful sense of who Wilder was and how she had lived. As much as any reader of the period, he grasped the depth of her vision. “She understood the meaning of hardship and struggle, of joy and work, of shyness and bravery,” he wrote later. “She was never overcome by drabness or squalor. She never glamorized anything; yet she saw the loveliness in everything.”
