RaveUSA Today\"Caroline Fraser’s magnificent new biography Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder reveals the full story of Wilder’s journey from pioneer girl to best-selling author, including the wrenching details of Laura’s painfully fraught relationship with daughter Rose, and how their turbulent partnership affected the books … Fraser deconstructs the idealized myth in the children’s books with an incisive critical reading of Wilder’s much darker autobiography, Pioneer Girl … This biography becomes even more fascinating when it turns to the second half of Wilder’s life, specifically how Rose Wilder Lane — a ‘yellow journalist’ of the Hearst era — urged her mother to soften her autobiography into stories that upheld ‘proud American values’ … Prairie Fires is a remarkable, noteworthy biography of an American literary icon.\
