Caroline: Little House, Revisited
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USA Today Bestseller! One of Refinery29's Best Reads of September In this novel authorized by the Little House Heritage Trust, Sarah Miller vividly recreates the beauty, hardship, and joys of the frontier in a dazzling work of historical fiction, a captivating story that illuminates one courageous, resilient, and loving pioneer woman as never before—Caroline Ingalls, "Ma" in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved Little House books. In the frigid days of February, 1870, Caroline Ingalls and her family leave the familiar comforts of the Big Woods of Wisconsin and the warm bosom of her family, for a new life in Kansas Indian Territory. Packing what they can carry in their wagon, Caroline, her husband Charles, and their little girls, Mary and Laura, head west to settle in a beautiful, unpredictable land full of promise and peril. The pioneer life is a hard one, especially for a pregnant woman with no friends or kin to turn to for comfort or help. The burden of work must be shouldered alone, sickness tended without the aid of doctors, and babies birthed without the accustomed hands of mothers or sisters. But Caroline’s new world is also full of tender joys. In adapting to this strange new place and transforming a rough log house built by Charles’ hands into a home, Caroline must draw on untapped wells of strength she does not know she possesses. For more than eighty years, generations of readers have been enchanted by the adventures of the American frontier’s most famous child, Laura Ingalls Wilder, in the Little House books. Now, that familiar story is retold in this captivating tale of family, fidelity, hardship, love, and survival that vividly reimagines our past.
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The events of Little House on the Prairie are retold from Ma's perspective. Corrections are made from Laura Ingles Wilder's story, using historical facts, maps, etc, so it doesn't match up exactly to Wilder's book. For instance, Caroline is pregnant with Carrie half the book and that effects a lot of interactions and struggles throughout. There is a childbirth scene but it's fairly vague in its description.
Descriptions fill in a lot of detail absent in Wilder's book. How things were done and what struggles were hidden from the children. Caroline's thoughts on the two girls are also interesting. No longer is Mary the pretty kill-joy. Laura is more than the loud tomboy. We also get to know why Caroline acted as she did due to things from her childhood. Why does she hate Native Americans? Why is she so much more anxious about everything than Charles?
Late in the book there are a couple supremely embarrassing sex scenes. For someone who grew up with “Ma” and “Pa”, it's like walking in on your parents.
The audiobook is very nice, with singing from both Caroline and Charles.
I've a confession to make: I'm a 42 year old man who loves football, swords ‘n' sorcery fantasy, and Laura Ingalls Wilder.
I've probably read the Little House books dozens of times. My favorite is THE LONG WINTER, and that single volume was probably one of the biggest reasons why I wrote AFTER EVERYONE DIED.
When I saw a book blurb on a Harper-Collins mailer about a novel called CAROLINE, and saw that it was about the Ingalls family's move from Pepin, Wisconsin to the Kansas Indian Territories, I was intrigued. This was a novel written for adults from the perspective of Caroline Ingalls, the family matriarch, and how she and Charles moved to Kansas with two young girls, while she was pregnant with her third. The book was a fascinating and insightful look at a a woman who doesn't get too much depth in the books (Laura's love for her father is evident often, but Ma is a steadfast icon in the background, kind and nurturing, but never really a deep character). I have the utmost respect for Charles and Caroline and how they handled their moves across the prairie, helping to settle this country. To really get inside Caroline's head was a wonderful treat for a fan of the Little House books.
Sarah Miller really dives deep on Caroline, bringing up the historical facts of her own childhood (losing her own father at age five and being raised by a stepfather) to process the relationships she saw between Charles and the girls. She really examines the relationship between Caroline and Charles, a very tight, loving relationship that any couple would envy.
All in all, it's a really interesting piece of historical fiction that I found riveting. It was nice to see the pieces of Laura's LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE show up in this book from Caroline's perspective–things like Mr. Edwards meeting Santa Claus, and the building of the home in Kansas with Mr. Edwards' help, and the malaria outbreak that nearly killed the Ingalls family. Laura was relegated to a squawky child in the background, while Mary was more of a focus for Caroline. Even in Laura's books, Laura was Pa's kid, and Mary was Caroline's.
If you're a fan of the Little House books, I'd recommend giving this one a go. You might enjoy it.
Having said all that, this is one of those books that I both loved and hated. I loved everything I saw that I wrote about above. Miller is clearly a good writer, and she has a love for the material. Her prose is elegant and vivid most of the time.
The things I hated are based wholly on my own tastes and opinions, not anything empirical. For instance, Miller's prose–to my mind–is often overwrought. Obviously, this being a major publication from Harper-Collins, it was edited by at least one or two editors who had no problem with this prose. It feels as though it fits Caroline's personality. It is a similar voice to how Laura wrote the initial books, and given that it's directed at adults and not children, the extra wordiness of the prose can be forgiven, but I found myself rolling my eyes at times.
One of the biggest issues I had with the prose was the proliferation of similes. It felt like there was at least one heavy simile per page, so much so that I started getting angry at every one. They were obvious similes that tried to capture a voice from 1870, and sometimes they were forgivable, but many times they felt so obtuse and clunky that they took me out of the moment.
Again, her editors seemed to have no issue with them, so this is purely my own editorial tastes in action. I'm not against similes. I use a lot of them, myself. But when they start battering down your door with obviousness, there's a problem.
I enjoyed the story greatly. It was a welcomed perspective to a book series I love. Even with my own issues with the prose, I'd still give this one 5/5 stars. It was an enjoyable and readable book, just a little heavy-handed at times.
