RaveCleveland Review of BooksThe intersections between a single family’s experiences and events of wider historical importance provide a grand stage for Fraser’s portrayal of Wilder’s life, times, and enduring legacy. In beautifully unfolding prose, Prairie Fires presents a rich account of Wilder’s frontier childhood, personal relationships, and writing life alongside a vivid historical background. Through deep archival research, Fraser lifts the veil of myth created by Wilder’s published writings to reveal a truer account of the hardships her work concealed and the resonances of that life with the broader American experience ... In describing the particular fortunes of the Wilders, Fraser speaks to the common experience of settlers in the West. Looking beyond the rose-tinted picture of frontier life presented by Laura Ingalls Wilder in her autobiographical novels, Fraser reveals the extent of the hardships she and her family endured, from extreme debt to the death of her infant brother, Freddie, at just a few months old. This brutal picture is softened by intimate moments of family life and of community that are more familiar to Wilder’s readers ... Underscoring the inextricability of Wilder’s life and work, this is also the portrait that Prairie Fires, through its historicizing impulse, presents of Laura Ingalls Wilder herself: A woman of great determination, whose life, hopes, and dreams speak to the fundamentals of the American character.
