The Long Winter (novel)
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The Long Winter is a novel by Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in 1940, earning Ingalls Wilder a Newbery Honor. The story is set in South Dakota during the winter of 1880-1881, when Laura turned fourteen.
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[edit] Summary:
The story begins with Laura's father ("Pa") explaining to her that he knows the winter is going to be hard, because muskrats always build a house with thick walls before a hard winter, and this year, they have built the thickest walls that he has ever seen. Some time later, Pa is talking to some men in the store, and an old Native American man enters, and tells them that there will be blizzards for seven months. Impressed by his convincing manner, Pa decides to move the family to town for the winter. Laura goes to school briefly with her youger sister, Carrie, before the winter becomes so harsh that she has to stop. A train is expected with food supplies for the entire village, but is unable to get through because of the weather. The people are hungry, and Laura's future husband, Almanzo Wilder, together with another boy, risks his life to get wheat for them - enough to last the winter. As predicted, the blizzards last for seven months, and finally, at the beginning of May, the train with the food arrives, and the family eat their Christmas dinner, as the turkey has been perfectly preserved in the ice for several months.
[edit] Historical Context
Wilder was, by her own admission, a writer of historical fiction. Most of the people, places and events she describes are actually from her own life, but she sometimes juxtaposed events and compressed characters in the interest of good storytelling. The Long Winter, however, contains very little actual fiction, with most details of the story being exactly true. The setting of The Long Winter, was the fall of 1880, to spring of 1881. Accurate details of this book would include the names of the townspeople (with only minor exceptions), the length of the winter, the Chicago and Northwestern Railway closing down business until the Spring thaw, the near-starvation of the townspeople, and the incredible bravery of Wilder and Garland going on a search for wheat that no one was even sure was there. The slightly fictionalized material includes the nonstop procession of blizzards lasting on average three days each, with only two to two-and-a-half days between them from late October until early April. The historical record shows that there was an uncommonly large amount of blizzards that winter, but Wilder's contentions in the book would imply about 35 separate blizzards during that time frame, which is almost certainly "dramatic license". Local oral history and research by her biographers also indicate that Wilder and Garland traveled about 12 miles south of De Smet to find the wheat, not 20 as she states in the book. Almanzo Wilder is portrayed in the book as roughly six years older than Laura, when he was in fact ten years older. But aside from these minor variations - all in the interest of serving the story - the book is a highly accurate portrayal of that legendary winter in Dakota Territory, and considered by many readers of her books to be, from a dramatic standpoint, one of the best books in the entire series.
[edit] Editing of the book
It has always been known that Laura's editor for her Little House books was her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, a very famous author and journalist in her own right. John E. Miller, in his biography Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder, discusses extensive correspondence between Laura and Rose during the editing process, and includes facsimiles of that correspondence.
[edit] Table of Contents:
Make Hay While the Sun Shines
An Errand to Town
Fall of the Year
October Blizzard
After the Storm
Indian Summer
Indian Warning
Settled in Town
Cap Garland
Three Days' Blizzard
Pa Goes to Volga
Alone
We'll Weather the Blast
One Bright Day
No Trains
Fair Weather
Seed Wheat
Merry Christmas
Where There's a Will
Antelope!
The Hard Winter
Cold and Dark
The Wheat in the Wall
Not Really Hungry
Free and Independent
Breathing Spell
For Daily Bread
Four Days' Blizzard
The Last Mile
It Can't Beat Us
Waiting for the Train
The Christmas Barrel
Christmas in May
