Enjoyable read about their married life and struggles on the farm.

"I liked the part when they had two babies, it's sad that the boy died. Laura and Manly got sick after Rose was born. I didn't like that part. I also didn't like that they had a fire and there were more tornados and wolves. I don't like that it is the last book in the series and ends sadly." - Cadee, age 8

Well. That wasn't very cheerful.

Finished this series that I never read as a kid.

Before I read this book, I read that it was a first draft found after Laura Ingalls Wilder’s death and was published as found. I didn’t have very high expectations but was pleasantly surprised. It’s true that it doesn’t feel as put-together as the other books, but it was still an enjoyable read and nice to see what happened with Laura and Almanzo after they were married. (However, I did not like that Almanzo was called Mani the whole book!) It would have been nice if the book had ended on a happier note though.

After "These Happy Golden Years", this book seems like a standalone. The story is told well, but here are my reasons for not including it in the Little House set. It begins with a narrative of Almanzo and Laura's proposal and wedding that differs in some details from the account in the book before. Laura calls Almanzo "Manly" in this book, but not in any others. In addition, there were some very not golden years when they were first married and I really missed having Ma and Pa in the story. It seems like they would have been close enough to visit more often.

The First Four Years : The Little House Series :: The Cursed Child : The Harry Potter Series, in my opinion. It's nice to get a little glimpse into what came after, and I liked it OK, but I just don't count it as part of the whole. However, where The Cursed Child feels like fanfiction to me, The First Four Years was real life. In all its godforsaken turmoil. Pioneer farming? Yikes. NOT for me. Laura's spunk is the best part of this book, as in all the books. Fantastic character, and I can only assume, fantastic woman.

Bit of a lackluster end to one of my fave series

This is an unfinished manuscript. Laura Ingalls Wilder intended to write a full novel on her early years married to Almanzo Wilder but she passed prior to finishing the book.

Roger Lea MacBride ("adopted" grandson of Rose, Laura's daughter) found this manuscript after posthumously rummaging through Rose's things and decided to publish this anyway.

I don't wish it would've gone unpublished but at the same time, it's just not as good as the previous books.

We do get some content about the new hardships she faced as a wife and mother but the books don't have the same feel.

It feels shorter, rushed and repeats information from the eighth book.

Roger Lea MacBride then inherited all of the Little House Royalties (n  notn Laura's extended family) and proceeded to publish many a book based on the Ingalls family. His descendants still own the rights to Laura's life and estate opposed to Laura's family.

n  I have not read those companion books (nor do I intend to) based on that principle.n

Laura's books were autobiographical. His books are works of fiction.

Plus it always bugged me that Roger MacBride took over the series.

Laura's family survived - her aunts, uncles and cousins all survived - so while she didn't have any direct descents (other than Rose, who never had surviving children) but there are certainly Ingalls descendants who are there.

MacBride wrote a series from Rose's perspective often leaning on things that Rose supposedly told him during their few years as friends when she was in her 70s and he was just a boy. He also used the estate to amass a fortune based off of Laura's series.

It bothers me.

It really bothers me.

To put this in perspective, if I went over to my 70-year-old neighbor, became "friends" for a few years, grabbed the rights to her late mother's estate, then waited a few decades after her death to capitalize on her experiences as a child under the veil of being an "adopted" grandchild (despite nothing legal ever happening)...it would be wrong.

If not wrong, at least a little shady and morally ambigious?

Then, when her surviving family goes, "no wait. That's OUR story" to refuse them anything, instead pass their (the Ingall's) family legacy to my (completely unrelated) family ...again because of the "adopted" grandchild status (and powerful lawyers).

It seems...weird...and a little strange (and skeezy?) to capitalize to such an extent on someone you knew for a few years in your childhood.

Plus, am I REALLY supposed to believe that Roger's memory is SO GOOD that he can retell Rose's entire life... thirty years AFTER she supposedly told it to him? Methinks quite a bit of it is fiction.

Quite frankly, if Rose wanted to tell the story, she would've written it herself.

Anyway, that was a really long explanation to say...whelp, this is as far as I'll go in the series...

Audiobook Comments
Read by Cherry Jones and accompanied by Paul Woodiel on the fiddle - this lovely pair made this book amazing.

YouTube | Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat @miranda_reads

I really wish Laura Ingalls Wilder lived long enough to finish this book and to write many more about her fascinating life. What a treasure this entire series is!

For those of you who have read the whole series, how would you rank them? My favorites are These Happy Golden Years, By the Shores of Silver Lake, and Farmer Boy.

Laura's second baby was born and died within a page and when I finished the book, I had to go back and reread to make sure I had indeed read he'd died.

I know this is a fragment of a book and without any editing or depth to it, but again, we got a whole damn book about a single winter and the death of a child got...a page.

Anyway, good to know the men were all kind of dumb and hopeless. I thought Almanzo (surprisingly only referred to as Manly in this book and literally never called that elsewhere) was perhaps an upgrade from Pa and his Follies but...nah, not really.

I grew up on the Little House books and had no idea that this story of Laura and Almanzo's first years of marriage even existed. Grittier than the earlier books and sometimes quite scary--that blizzard! My edition has excellent illustrations by Garth Williams.