Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have read through other "negative" reviews of the book, to see what it was that people disliked about it. Most I noticed, or at least the ones I read, seemed to feel that the author was too politically motivated, spent too much time on Rose, attacked Laura's politics, contained too much history, and basically was too hard on Pa. I guess I differ from many readers in that I'm not a big Laura fan per se. I read all the Little House books in grade school, and I did over the years read more here and there about the Ingalls family. What I find a little ridiculous is the idea that somehow Laura "lied" in her books. Well they are for young children, and so of course they are going to be watered down. And especially when they were first published, children's books did try to be happier and did not contain themes that you might see now. Plus the whole fantasy of the west was portrayed very much like her books, on TV and movies. The old westerns mostly showed gunfights, grown men getting drunk in saloons, fighting the Indians (who were always evil), and so on. People were never starving, crops sometimes failed but there was always a happy ending. The Little House TV show was ludicrous--Pa even had fresh orange juice for his girls on winter mornings! So I don't see anything wrong with the Little House books as they were written. They gave a little bit of a glimpse into a way of life long gone. What I disliked about this book was primarily the writing style. It was dry and tedious, and boring. I admire her research efforts, but she crammed in way too much background and the Laura story drowned in it. A paragraph or two of what was happening at the time would suffice, and to weave it into the story, ie, Pa lost his land because of the recession when 10,000 farmers lost land...something like that. Then paragraph or two, and then move on. A good third of the book can easily be removed and you wouldn't notice. There was no emotion in this story, not even when Laura's baby died and her house burned down 2 weeks later. It was so flat and dry. But I think that the author may have added in so much filler is that Laura simply isn't all that interesting. As a person, she was quite ordinary. Her family took to the road as did many pioneers, and they endured incredible hardships, and that I find one of the good points of this book. She really explained what life was often like--locusts, drought, starvation, debt, lost land--death of infants and young children due to infection and injury was quite common. So were children working to help out their families. I realize that the author is limited by the availability of papers and records about the Ingalls family, but unless you're writing a novel, this all gets very tedious. The story is basically one hardship after another, one move after another, and Laura working at different jobs, going to school, growing up, etc. Very little is said about her sisters, other than Mary. Her claim to fame are her books written well into adulthood, but that's it. I finally stopped when they got to Missouri as the story really became boring. The insight into life on the frontier was the most interesting, but not about Laura raising poultry or apples. There are a lot of comments about Rose, and obviously she needs to be in the story. But again, I think the author wrote so much about Rose is that she was eventually leading the more interesting life. Or perhaps, a better idea would be to shorten the book, mention a little bit about Rose and then move into the writing of the books. I bought this book on kindle and I'm going to delete it because I doubt I will open it again. So again, I am reading this because I love history and thought this would be a nice overview of pioneers intermingled with Laura's "real life," but a book that could have been great and interesting turned out differently. A good editor would have helped tremendously. I would say this story could have been told in about 300 pages.