"The ground was covered with hailstones so thickly, it looked covered with a sheet of ice, and they even lay in drifts here and there. Leaves and branches were stripped off the young trees and the sun shone with a feeble, watery light over the wreck. The wreck, thought Laura, of a year's work, of hopes and plans of ease and pleasure. Well, there would be no threshers to cook for." (PG. 55)

This was a nice quick read into the first four years of marriage and farmer life for Laura Ingalls Wilde and her husband, Almanzo. It was interesting to see their struggles and how calm and sometimes stressed she was through the situations she went through. I feel like she was a good understanding wife. She gave her husband the chance to prove himself and his ambitions. I think if a woman went through this in modern times there would be feuding and divorce involved.

They had their first and only child, Rose, that was doted on. It was funny to see that motherhood hasn't changed much and how kids can get into dangerous situations especially in a farm with animals.

It's been a long time since I've read any 'Little House' books but I am curious about reading more. I did love the show when I was young.

Not as satisfying as the other Little House books since it was the unfinished rough draft that was found and published after Laura Wilder's death. The first chapter of this book recounts the same events as the last chapter in These Happy Golden Years and the difference in writing style is quite remarkable. With just the bare facts and little effort to flesh out any of the characters, the final novel is a disappointment.

Life for Laura and Almonzo was difficult beyond belief but unlike the disaster-upon-disaster of The Long Winter, there was not Pa and Ma's quiet strength and faith in God to help the reader believe that somehow they'll get through.

On page 119 there is a statement about how much Laura hated their life. It was a stunning statement after all the gracious fortitude of Laura's parents in all the previous books. If I ever re-read the series, I will skip this final book, which doesn't bring it to a gratifying conclusion.

Although I do bien sûr much appreciate having now also read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s posthumously (in 1971) published (and generally unedited and as such rather majorly stark and raw) The First Four Years (which basically, as the title suggests, portrays Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder’s first four years of marriage), I also and honestly do have to and very readily admit that with regard to both content and writing style, The First Four Years has not really been all that delightful as a personal reading experience.

For albeit that after recently encountering a number of Laura Ingalls Wilder biographies, I do well realise and understand that the first years of Laura and Almanzo’s life as a married couple were in fact extremely rough and beset with and by many agricultural set-backs and home based tragedies, I still do tend to find the almost list-like litany of one potential horror after another (and how this is narrationally featured and shown in The First Four Years) more than a trifle tedious and generally also much too frustrating and painful for me to truly in any manner enjoy perusing. And yes indeed, I am as such certainly also quite majorly happy that I did in fact NOT read The First Four Years as a young reader, as a child, as I do tend think that for my childhood self, the sheer amount of desperation encountered in The First Four Years and how this is basically all stacked into a huge mountain of textual pain and suffering by Laura Ingalls Wilder, it really would have been rather too much for me to bear and adequately deal with at a young reading age.

But well, even as an older adult, while I do indeed much appreciate the historical reality and authentic seeming accuracy which Laura Ingalls Wilder depicts in The First Four Years, I still really cannot say that I have actually found all that much if any joy and pleasure with and in The First Four Years , that I have certainly not found Laura Ingalls Wilder’s text all that engaging and emotionally satisfying. Because aside from the rather in one’s face contents and thematics of tragedy upon tragedy, in particular, the sparse and lacking in emotion, in dialogue and exposition style of narrative expression encountered in The First Four Years, this really does not at all appeal to my own and personal verbal and syntactic aesthetics. And yes, for me, The First Four Years does therefore and in fact majorly annoyingly feel rather more like an outline, that narrationally speaking, there really does need to be considerably more textual story meat included (and considering that ALL of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s other Little House on the Prairie novels had been meticulously edited by Laura’s daughter Rose Wilder Lane, perhaps The First Four Years, maybe this unedited and for me only like a basic sketch of Laura and Almanzo’s first years of marriage should either not have been published at all or should have also been much expanded and edited).

This short book is actually a draft that was discovered posthumously. I expect the plan was to go back and flesh it out. As it stands, it’s a bare-bones account of the most prominent memories of the beginning of the Wilders’ marriage. I still have only read the first five Little House books, and that was years and years ago, so I don’t remember the style of those books very well. I expect this one will be quite different in contrast.

I heard a long time ago that Laura hated dwelling on negative events, and that’s why Mary’s going blind is glossed over and the birth and death of their baby brother is excluded. In this account, it’s just one hardship after another. Laura states what happened but doesn’t dwell on it.

Imagine you’re a newlywed farmer on the frontier. What could go wrong? Whatever you can think of, it happened to these folks. Seriously, we have no right to complain about our lives ever. These pioneers would look at us with contempt because any one of them could kick our butts.

I found the whole account gripping; it was vivid and stark at the same time. It really brought that time and place to life.

It was suggested to me that this last Little House book perhaps be left out of the read-aloud-to-my-boys lineup, so I revisited it on my own. And I think that was a wise suggestion--best to just leave the series on the happy ending of These Happy Golden Years. This one is dark, very different in tone and content from the rest of the series--likely because it was published after the death of Laura's daughter and was printed as-is from her journals, unedited.

You realize immediately you're in for something very different with the jarring opening scenes, in which events from These Happy Golden Years are repeated but with changes in the details. Almanzo, who was so courageous and generous and smart in the earlier books, comes across as an idiot here, and the Laura who seemed so headstrong and independent in previous books is suddenly all, "OK dear, drown us in debt, no big deal, it's not my business." What?

I suppose this book is more realistic and less sugar-coated...but for the sake of childhood nostalgia and fun reading aloud, I prefer the warm and happy books to this one. It's a quick read when you're not reading aloud, but too depressing to plow through with my boys.

ความหวานชื่นจากเล่มที่ผ่านมา เป็นความหวานชื่นเดียวจากหนังสือชุดนี้ใช่มั๊ย!!
และแล้วชีวิตหลังแต่งงานของลอร่า ก็กลายเป็นชีวิตของนักบุกเบิกอีกครั้ง
เธอกับแอลแมนโซต้องกลับไปตั้งต้นใหม่ เหมือนครั้งที่พ่อกับแม่ของลอร่าดั้นด้นมา
วิธีการอาจแตกต่างกันไปตามยุคสมัย
แต่ที่แน่ๆ เธอยังต้องลำบากเหมือนเดิม และดูจะกว่าเดิมเสียด้วย
เป็นอีกเล่มที่อ่านแล้วเหนื่อยจริงๆ ค่ะ

ที่แย่กว่านั้นคือ อยู่ๆ คาแรกเตอร์ของตัวละครก็ดูจะเปลี่ยนๆ
อยู่ๆ ลอร่าก็เกิดไม่อยากให้แอลแมนโซเป็นชาวนา อยากไปอยู่ในเมือง
ซึ่งแปลกมาก เพราะตลอดมา ลอร่าแสดงออกเสมอว่ารักอิสระ
ชอบต้นไม้ ชอบช่วยพ่อทำงานกลางแจ้ง
เกลียดการพบปะกับคนแปลกหน้าในเมือง
แต่แล้วเปิดเล่มนี้มา เธอก็มีความคิดกลับตาลปัตร
อ่านแล้วมันก็จะเฟลๆ ในตัวละครหน่อยๆ

This is the last in the Little House series, looking at the first four years of Laura and Almanzo’s marriage. They homesteaded during this time and tried to get a farm going, and they had a daughter, Rose.

This was published after Rose’s death. The book was an unfinished manuscript. I still really enjoyed it, even if it wasn’t as Laura would have published it if she’d ever taken time to finish it. There were still plenty of brilliant descriptions of things. During the four years, their farm (at least the crops) never did flourish, though they did well with their animals. The weather (as it often is with farming) was the culprit – hail, a tornado (or cyclone, as Laura called it), drought, fire. Also blizzards in winter factored into their lives, as it did with anyone on the prairies. I have a beautiful “full color collector’s edition”, which has very nice glossy colour illustrations.

Whenever I think about how much I didn't care for this book compared to the rest of the series, I have to remind myself that it's unedited and unfinished. Laura died before she finished this book and her daughter Rose had it published as was when it was found. This book covers her first several years of marriage to Almanzo (nicknamed Manly in the book). Even if Laura was alive to finish the book, I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it much better. To me, Little House was about the Ingalls family as a unit, not just Laura. It's too strange reading about her and Almanzo without appearances from the others. But maybe that's just me. Final thoughts on the series: I'm so glad that I didn't grow up during this time. My goodness, what a rough time they always had. I'd certainly be in a constant state of stress, that's for sure.

So I loved the Little House series, but I hated this book. It's not that Laura isn't fun now that she's married--but it's not as interesting or as well written as the others in the series, and it's hard to watch awful things happen to characters you love.

After the happily ever after for Laura and Almanzo was one big 'hang in there!' They had love and heart and courage and they needed it to face the calamities that beset their first four years of marriage.

Laura and Almanzo made an agreement when they first got married. She didn't want to be a farmer's wife because she knew how hard the life was and they always seemed to just barely be getting by. Almanzo asked her to give it four years and she agree.

Poor Manny, he wanted things to be so wonderful for Laura. He built her a beautiful little house with a quaint pantry, good cold cellar, a separate bedroom, and all on the pretty tree homestead where he kept a driving team, a new saddle horse for Laura, his work horses, and their buggy, sleigh and wagon. He had in lots of wheat acres and had a new plow to make it easier to get in more acres. But between bouts of bad weather right when the good crop was coming in, their dreadful illnesses and the complicated birth of children, their debts were growing concerning. Laura gave it her all as did Almanzo.

Though there were some really hard struggles through this shorter and last book in the Little House series, Laura told it all with hope, some amusement, and lots of tenderness.

Cherry Jones remained a fab narrator for this final book and adapted to the change in tone and writing style quite well.

All in all, I was glad I revisited this one because, while I remembered the earlier books in the series rather well, this was the one I had not many memories from and so much more struck me as an adult reader that flew by my head as a child.

At last, my husband and I have finished reading all of the Little House books aloud to each other. Unlike all of the other books, I'm not shelving this under Children--this book clearly wasn't meant for kids. To be fair, it wasn't really meant for anyone; Laura wrote it out but never published it, nor did her daughter. The first four years of Laura's married life were so miserable, I can fully understand why neither Wilder woman wanted to polish the story up for a child-friendly audience. Making this into a true children's book would require changing what happened so much as to make it unrecognizable. Nevertheless, for fans of the series or of Laura herself, it's a fascinating chapter of life, even if it is told in a much briefer, rougher style than the rest of the Wilder books.

We're so reluctant to leave Laura behind that I think my husband and I will read her journal On the Way Home next, and then perhaps her posthumously published autobiography.

series finished!