Marta McDowell to talk about her Laura Ingalls Wilder book on Feb. 24
Feb. 7 marked the 151st anniversary of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s birth. This Saturday, readers have the opportunity to meet author Marta McDowell at the Bridgewater Library as she discusses her recently published "The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder."
In this free Meet the Author event, the Chatham resident will talk about Wilder's relationship with the rich rural landscape which inspired her "Little House on the Prairie" books.
The event will run from 2 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 24, at Bridgewater Library, 1 Vogt Drive. Copies of the book will be available during the event, which will include a question-and-answers throughout its duration. More details are available at https://visitsomersetnj.org/event/meet-author-marta-mcdowell-adults/
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An American Studies student at Douglas, McDowell teaches landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden, consults for private clients and public gardens, and is a popular lecturer in the U.S. and in Great Britain.
Her bio cites involvement with esteemed horticultural institutions, and her garden is included in the Smithsonian’s Archive of American Gardens. Among her other books are "Emily Dickinson’s Gardens" and "Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life."
"And I’m fascinated by the history of what’s on our plate," she said.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
McDowell characterizes Ingalls’ as "the quintessential American beginning."
Born in 1867 in a Wisconsin log cabin, Ingalls was a frontier baby, one of five children. Her pioneer parents hacked farmland from forests and moved their family repeatedly — Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, Missouri, even a short time in Florida. Laura was 2 years old when her family moved to Kansas, the setting for "Little House on the Prairie" books.
McDowell notes that violets in particular appear in almost every one of Ingalls Wilder’s books.
From 1882 to 1885, at 15, Laura was a teacher in South Dakota. She married Almanzo Wilder in 1885 and their union lasted until his death in October, 1949 in Mansfield Missouri. Rose – Laura’s Prairie Rose — was their first child and the only one to survive to adulthood. The family moved several times because of successive crop failures. In 1894, they settled in Mansfield and eventually established a dairy farm and fruit orchards, named Rocky Ridge.
Ingalls Wilder was 65 when she published "Little House in the Big Woods," first of the Little House books in 1932. The final eighth book in the series was published in 1943. She died in 1957 at her farm in Mansfield almost exactly 90 years after the date of her birth.
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Tricia Vanderhoof: This is an exceptional book on many levels, and it’s beautifully written. How has it been received since its September debut?
Marta McDowell: Reception has been very positive. It came out in a sort of crowd though; last year was Wilder’s 150th birthday and it may have been slightly overshadowed by a really huge book, ‘Prairie Fires.' And that’s very deserving. Caroline Fraser is a wonderful scholar and a wonderful writer.
TV: The titles of your books are fascinating. I think they expand your demographic. Do choose them yourself?
MM: Well . . . no. I wanted to call it ‘A Wilder Garden.’ We actually had an argument about it. I thought theirs was the most boring title but they insisted. Laura, Ingalls and Wilder had to appear up front.
TV: Production values in the book published by the Oregon-based Timber Press are wonderful, including placement of the color and black-and-white illustrations and photographs.
MM: I’ve been very lucky. It hasn’t been the same person throughout, but the people who do it actually read the text. And I really have no contact with them. They get the marked-up manuscript and decide where illustrations should go. There are 228 in this one. I’m not an artist but they are. And I know going in that Timber Press doesn’t stint on the cover, or quality of the paper; everything is first-quality.
Physical labor then and now
TV: Your Prologue specifies ‘An imagined scene in Mansfield Missouri, Late autumn1894.’ Pondering that (Laura’s) parents had made so many farms in so many places over so many places, you conclude: ‘(Pa and Ma) just kept at it. She would too.’ That seems to summarize and characterize Ingalls’ entire philosophy.
MM: I needed a way to set it up. (Laura and Almanzo) were starting over and I wanted an opening that would provide an arc for her whole life.’
TV: Also in the Prologue you posit, ‘Almanzo says he’d rather have me at the other end of the crosscut saw than any man he’s ever worked with.’
The sheer stamina required — Laura was only 4’ 11” tall. I have no idea what that must encompass, but it was part of daily life. What are your feelings about America’s loss of those skills?
MM: It’s true, most people who perform physical labor today are not farmers. It’s so very tiring and we just don’t do that any more. Over the course of my career I’ve been involved in physically challenging gardening projects — especially summer work — but I’ve never been at the end of crosscut saw. A bow saw, even a chainsaw sometimes . . . but not a crosscut.
Bill Anderson (a prominent historian and biographer specializing in Ingalls-Wilder) felt the Prologue was fiction and not playing fair. That’s why specified ‘fictional account,’ including the line about Almanzo. But that’s my job, not just to entertain but to try to communicate the feeling.
TV: You recount the natural abundance Almanzo relished growing in New York State. The couple resembled Johnny Appleseed, sowing for the future wherever they went.
MM: That’s interesting because that also struck me when reading ‘Farmer Boy’ (1933/2nd of the Little House series) which is about her husband’s childhood.
Anecdotes, oral histories and research
TV: Each chapter includes a personal anecdote from your own experience; ‘Clearing the Land’ is one of my favorites. The meat of black walnuts is notoriously difficult to extract, intact, from its shell. You lament that your own father’s secret of how he accomplished this died with him. Has publication of this book shed any light?
MM: I still have no idea how my father did it. Probably with a vise and wire snips, and I think he had some gadget that he made out of an old board. At any rate, my husband cracked the code (pun intended) and bought me this cast iron monster cracker, American made, and what a product! t will take me a long time to recoup the cost in shelled black walnuts but I cracked a cup worth — it took two hours! — and made my mother’s cookie recipe this Christmas. Heaven.
TV: Your anecdotes are delightful. How did it come about?
MM: This is the only book where I veered off into memoir. It was not intentional, believe me.
One of (Ingalls’) gifts is that she plugs into the nostalgia of the individual. Just doing the research brought up my own intense well of memory about the black walnuts. It wasn’t exactly like a Ouija Board spelling it out — but it kind of was; I just wrote it down. Sent it to my editor, sure that it wouldn’t become part of the book. But he said, ‘This is just fine. I want one in every chapter.’
I found it wasn’t actually that hard, because part of her power is to tap into our feeling of family and memory.
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There was a far richer oral tradition in the days of Ingalls’ and Wilder’s childhood, few amusements available for most families. School, music, church events . . . but families spent a great deal of time telling and listening to stories. This is the great lode she mines later in life — she has them all in her head.
TV: How difficult was the research?
MM: Original newspaper sites were hugely helpful. And I went around to different homesites, different local collections. I was trying to put together a natural history chronicle that reflected what it was then.
And the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa, is wonderful Many, many of her daughter Rose’s diaries, budgets etc. are there, and so many letters.
TV: Are there still any prairies in the U.S.?
MM: The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in the Kansas Flint Hills is north of where they lived. It once covered 170 million acres, now it’s only about 11,000 acres. And there are little prairies here and there that haven’t been touched —usually left alone only because there are problems (swamps, etc.).
That was part of my journey, exploring part of the continent that I had never seen. We can’t turn it back, but if we disappeared tomorrow, nature would reclaim the land.
TV: The biggest challenges of a book like this?
MM: You have to make choices, even in a gardening book. People have very strong feelings and Wilder has fans who are just devoted to her. I’ve horrified audiences when I say I like the books but didn’t actually watch the TV series.
And we tend to glorify the settler although it was an extremely difficult life. There was conflict, disease. I also ask, ‘What about the people who were there first, Native Americans, others who were being pushed off the land over and over.’
There are also critics of Ingalls’ language and attitudes, especially references to minorities. Taken out of context, these things are no longer appropriate. But childhood Laura was her fictional narrator. For her – and her time – it was authentic.
For me? I want to introduce readers — and I hope their children — to place, time, plants and geography, and how the natural world, farming and agriculture, changed this continent.