Pioneer Girl

Author: Laura Ingalls Wilder

Editor: Pamela Smith Hill

Genre: Historical Biography

Publisher: South Dakota State Historical Society, 2014

Pages: 400

Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: Follow the real Laura Ingalls and her family as they make their way west—and discover that truth is as remarkable as fiction.

Hidden away since 1930, Laura Ingalls Wilder's original autobiography reveals the true stories of her pioneering life. Some of her experiences will be familiar; some will be a surprise. Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography re-introduces readers to the woman who defined the pioneer experience for millions of people around the world.

Wilder details the Ingalls family's journey through Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, back to Minnesota, and on to Dakota Territory— sixteen years of travels, unforgettable stories, and the everyday people who became immortal through her fiction. Using additional manuscripts, diaries, and letters, editor Pamela Smith Hill adds valuable context and explores Wilder's growth as a writer.

Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography also explores the history of the frontier that the Ingalls family traversed and the culture and life of the communities Wilder lived in. The book features over one hundred images, eight fully researched maps, and hundreds of annotations based on census data and records, newspapers of the period, and other primary documents.

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her autobiography, Pioneer Girl, in 1929-1930 when she was in her early sixties. Throughout the 1930s and into the early 1940s, Wilder utilized her original manuscript to write a successful children's series. She died in Mansfield, Missouri, at ninety years of age on February 10, 1957.

Review: I'm just a little bit Little House and Laura Ingalls Wilder obsessed. My only criticism about Pioneer Girl is that it ended. It was a fascinating read and I loved the pictures. Some of what is included was a review, but there was quite a bit of new information that I found completely fascinating.

I found the best way to read this was to read the original manuscript to a logical stopping point and then go back and read the notes pertaining to what I just read. This means that I read each page twice. It's amazing to me that I finished it in just over 10 days. There's a lot of text, and I stopped a few times to reference previous notes, pages, or pictures.

I'm hoping we can visit one or two of the Laura Ingalls Wilder sites in the Midwest on our trip next summer. A few things must fall into place first, but it would be a dream come true.

The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey

Author: Rinker Buck
Genre: History
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2015
Pages: 464
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: An epic account of traveling the length of the Oregon Trail the old-fashioned way—in a covered wagon with a team of mules, an audacious journey that hasn’t been attempted in a century—which also chronicles the rich history of the trail, the people who made the migration, and its significance to the country.

Spanning two thousand miles and traversing six states from Missouri to the Pacific coast, the Oregon Trail is the route that made America. In the fifteen years before the Civil War, when 400,000 pioneers used the trail to emigrate West—scholars still regard this as the largest land migration in history—it united the coasts, doubled the size of the country, and laid the groundwork for the railroads. Today, amazingly, the trail is all but forgotten.

Rinker Buck is no stranger to grand adventures. His first travel narrative, Flight of Passage, was hailed by The New Yorker as “a funny, cocky gem of a book,” and with The Oregon Trail he brings the most important route in American history back to glorious and vibrant life.

Traveling from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Baker City, Oregon, over the course of four months, Buck is accompanied by three cantankerous mules, his boisterous brother, Nick, and an “incurably filthy” Jack Russell terrier named Olive Oyl. Along the way, they dodge thunderstorms in Nebraska, chase runaway mules across the Wyoming plains, scout more than five hundred miles of nearly vanished trail on foot, cross the Rockies, and make desperate fifty-mile forced marches for water. The Buck brothers repair so many broken wheels and axels that they nearly reinvent the art of wagon travel itself. They also must reckon with the ghost of their father, an eccentric yet loveable dreamer whose memory inspired their journey across the plains and whose premature death, many years earlier, has haunted them both ever since.

But The Oregon Trail is much more than an epic adventure. It is also a lively and essential work of history that shatters the comforting myths about the trail years passed down by generations of Americans. Buck introduces readers to the largely forgotten roles played by trailblazing evangelists, friendly Indian tribes, female pioneers, bumbling U.S. Army cavalrymen, and the scam artists who flocked to the frontier to fleece the overland emigrants. Generous portions of the book are devoted to the history of old and appealing things like the mule and the wagon. We also learn how the trail accelerated American economic development. Most arresting, perhaps, are the stories of the pioneers themselves—ordinary families whose extraordinary courage and sacrifice made this country what it became.

At once a majestic journey across the West, a significant work of history, and a moving personal saga,The Oregon Trail draws readers into the journey of a lifetime. It is a wildly ambitious work of nonfiction from a true American original. It is a book with a heart as big as the country it crosses.

Review: This was a fascinating read because it piques the readers interest on so many different levels. On the surface, this is a tale of the author's trip and adventures along the Oregon Trail today, but he also pulls in accounts and experiences of the original pioneers on the trail. It is also part social commentary on the state of these united states, and our challenges as a "connected," fast-paced society. There is a bit of memoir feel to it as well as Buck sorts through his feelings about his father and the dynamics of his family.

At times the details of their adventure became a little tedious, but with a story so "American" it's easy to see why this is a hot book right now.