This is exciting news. I wonder how long it is, because for $36 I want all the dirt! Did she call her mom out for being the manipulative meanie she appears to be in the books? If that's how Ma was portrayed in the family version of the books, how awful was she really.
To be fair though, being married to a guy like Pa had to be tough. He never had success and they moved around A LOT. I am betting some of those moves were escaping from debt or other issues.
Oh yeah, Pa was terrible with moving them all over the place, and it seemed like he made a lot of sketchy decisions. But it always felt like Ma took her frustrations out on the kids, especially Laura. It always made me mad that Mary was such a suck up to Ma in ways that seemed designed to make Laura look bad, and it annoyed me that Ma couldn't seem to see through that. And this is coming from the perspective of a goody goody myself -- my mom knew when I was pulling shit.
I'm super excited to read it. I'm also curious to see how much the writing style differs.
Me too...I know Rose's voice is in a lot of the LHOTP books so I am interested to see what the "real" LIW sounds like.
Just an FYI for any Little House fans who haven't heard it, Episode 2 of The History Chicks is on Laura Ingalls Wilder. Really interesting podcast. There is a following minisode on the books. And the book The Wilder Life is really good. I really want to visit Rocky Ridge Farm.
I grew up near one of the LHOTP homestead sites and loved the book as a kid. I'll have to check the podcast out - it sounds interesting. Thanks!
Man, I missed this when I was on vacation. You mean life with a father who consistently snuck onto Indian territory until he was run off in the rural midwest in the late 19th century wasn't all sunshine and daisies? You don't say...
PS, the worst episode of the show was when Mary's baby was killed in the fire.
I'm holding out, sometimes less popular books they won't put up the kindle version until the release date (don't ask me why) so I'm hoping it will show up soon enough.
I was curious about a kindle version too and found this comment from 2013:
Thank you for your question. Along with making Wilder’s unpublished memoir widely available for the first time, Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography will add valuable context through photographs, annotations, maps, and appendices. We do have plans for an eBook version of Pioneer Girl in the future, but creating an eBook will require restructuring, so we will probably not be releasing a digital format at the same time as the print version.