I read this because I loved all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. I think John Miller did a good job and the book was well researched, but sometimes you don't want to know this much about your heroes.

Not the best Laura Ingalls Wilder bio I've ever read, but it does give more insight into her relationship with her daughter. Very "academically" written, I think.

This is a good biography (written for adults)that provides some critical analysis of Wilder as an author.

I have to say, I was surprised at how much of a role Rose Wilder Lane, Laura's daughter, played in the writing, editing, and publishing of the Little House books. I'm not sorry I read this, but I will say that it changed the way I viewed Laura Ingalls Wilder a bit, as my previous view of her was drawn only from the Little House books. I knew they were works of fiction, but they are autobiographical to a certain extent, and I think in my mind the book Laura and the author Laura were basically the same. Overall, I enjoyed this book and found it interesting to learn more about the life of one of my favorite children's authors.

Very informative and interesting. I learned lots of things I didn't know.

Read too much like a biography of Rose Wilder Lane. Still, I liked learning about the real LIW.

I wavered between 3 stars and 4 stars for this one. I was somewhat annoyed by the author's handling of political and religious issues, natch. I rarely see eye-to-eye with academia on these matters.

As part of a series dedicated to Missourians the book contained more about Missouri history than was ideal for someone not as in interested in that topic. Not that it wasn't interesting or apropos. Just a warning to others. One could certainly skim those parts without losing the thread of the story.

This is not a standard biography. It deal primarily with Laura's time in Missouri as an adult which was largely ordinary and unrecorded. There is interesting discussion of the nature of her relationship with her hugely complicated and brilliant only child, Rose. This portrait of Rose is less than flattering. Almanzo is mostly absent from the book as would be expected given how little is really know about his life in Missouri.

I ended up giving it 4 stars because I did enjoy the scholarly nature of the book and the amount of information and I could certainly recommend it to any devotees of Laura and/or Rose and/or Missouri.

Surprisingly good. I usually quit biographies part way through and this one I more or less finished. (I did skim through the politics and social history sections.) Despite the authors' claims that the Little House books were not biographies, it was fun to draw correlations between the lives the Ingalls and Wilders and the books themselves.

Miller tends to focus too much on Rose Wilder Lane in the latter part of the book, understandable since much of the material on her mother is from her letters and diaries. This book provides a balanced, researched view of Wilder's life, unlike the Zochert biography which takes the Little House books at face value.

Contains some interesting information, but is absolutely dreadfully written -- at the level of a women's club report. Surprising it was published as is, though he obviously did a great deal of research.

Really good...until Rose grew up. Seriously, I mean it. The author did his stuff and churned out a delightful biography, but I think he really wanted to write a literary biography. If the title tells his intent, it was to describe how an ordinary girl with no apparent writing goals ended up being the children's author of the day, maybe of all time. And he couldn't. Or didn't, anyway.

He did well with the history of her early life but I wanted more about the places, people and times. When you can't find letters or diaries to flesh out a portrait, you have to fall back on newspapers, magazines, and other writings of the times...but I can't see he did much of that. He just relayed the history; well-written, enjoyable, but not deeply satisfying. I prefer reading the annotations in Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography.

When Laura's writing career became the focus, it was clear he wanted to dig deep and see how in the world she pulled it off. Where did she start as a diarist, and how did she progress to a master storyteller? Did her non-fiction articles get editorial help, and if so, how did that develop her writing? Why were some characters included and others suppressed? How did three real-life girls become one Nellie Oleson? How much of the book was written by Rose? (Almost none; it seems, but she clearly had an influence.)

He tried to answer all these questions and more, but he didn't have a lot of first-hand material about Laura Ingalls Wilder--no diaries, not many letters except travel journals. However, he had plenty of material about Rose Wilder Lane and her writing career--and that's what he included. A lot of it. Her thoughts, feelings, personal angst, and anger at her parents.

Fine. I get that. It's what made her a writer. But it's not what made Laura Ingalls Wilder a writer.

All bellyaching aside, it's a good book. I just wish it had been titled, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder lane: The Women Behind the Legend.

One of the few adult biographies written about Laura Ingalls Wilder, this book does not disappoint. Miller performed patient and exacting research on his subject, and offers much intriguing information about the real Laura, whose fictionalized autobiographical works have made generations of readers feel that they "know" her. Miller tells us what was real and what was glossed over; he takes us into the Mansfield years and discusses the complex relationship between Laura and her daughter Rose. Readers will find plenty to chew on in this fascinating work. Affecting passages offer welcome glimpses into key moments and experiences in Wilder's life, such as the description of Almanzo's death and Laura's reaction, and accounts of their road trips and friendships. An important book for anyone interested in this author. Adult.