Laura Ingalls’ Friends Remember Her

by Dan L. White

from Ashley Preston Publishing

All of this in one book –

                                        

 

Laura Ingalls Wilder told happy stories about the windy, frosty prairie.

But she wrote of those hard times only after spending forty happy years in the Ozarks.

All the moves with Pa and Ma from Wisconsin to northern Missouri to Kansas to Minnesota to Iowa to Dakota --

All the moves with Almanzo from one homestead to another, to Minnesota, to Florida, back to Dakota --

All this moving ended

when Laura found her happy home in the Ozarks.

  

The happy heart of the Little House books

comes straight from the soul of the Ozarks.

Where the weather is mild and the seasons are gentle,

and little farms linger on the sides of the hills,

spotted with grazing cows and lazing goats.         

Where the big meal in the middle of the day is dinnner,

for the hard work in the field all afternoon,

and the last meal of the day is suppertime.

Where rush hour is getting the cows to the barn before dark.

Where Ma's and Pa's still build their own houses,

And youngins still romp rowdily through the whispering woods.

Little farms, little towns, little families working together ~

This is the Ozarks.

These are the real little house people.

 

Some of these Ozarkers were good personal friends of Laura & Almanzo.

We chatted with these folks, our neighbors, and you can sit in.

 

Laura Ingalls' Friends Remember Her,

contains memories from Laura & Almanzo's close friends,

Ozarkers who knew them around the town of Mansfield, Missouri.

They saw Laura over at Pennington's Grocery: one of the most famous authors in America, perched cozily on a wooden box, waiting for the clerk to get her groceries.

Almanzo was often at the Farmer's Exchange, exchanging stories with the farmers.

We chat with these folks, down home and close up, about their good friends Laura & Almanzo.

 

Laura also joins in our chats
 because we include long swatches of her magazine writings, on whatever subject is at hand.
 It's almost as if she's there talking with us.
And I’ll tell you what: her thoughts on family and little farms and what not are more interesting than almost anybody you've ever talked to.

 

Plus the book contains discussions of --

·        how Laura's Ozark life made her happy books possible;

·        what made Laura's books so happy;

·        whether her daughter Rose wrote Laura's books;

·        and Laura's last, lonely little house.

 

About the author --

Most people who write about Laura are academics and lawyers and such, who choose to live in suburbs with urban sprawl and five o'clock rush hours. That is who they are.

That is not who Laura & Almanzo were.

They chose to live on a small farm in the Ozark hills, even when daughter Rose urged them to leave, even when they became famous and well-to-do. They chose to live there until the day they died.

That is who they were.  Little Ozark farm people.  Little House people.

This book, Laura Ingalls' Friends Remember Her, is by and about Ozarkers.

Dan L. White and his family settled in the Ozarks some years ago,
just north of the Gasconade River,
right where Indian Creek and Brush Creek meet,
about 12 miles up the road from Laura's Rocky Ridge Farm.
There they live on a forty acre Ozark farmstead,
with cows, horses, chickens, goats, blackberries, black walnuts, ticks and chiggers.

Woodsmopolitan.

In this book Dan talks with some other down home folks in the Ozarks,
who were close friends of Laura and Almanzo,
and gives us a view of the Little House lady from her own kind --
the Little House kind of people.

All of this in one book –

                                        

Laura Ingalls' Friends Remember Her

 

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