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Many of these essays were written approximately 100 years ago and, interestingly, the themes are quite relevant today. Ms. Wilder writes, "In our own country there is a gathering into groups with mutterings and threats of violence [1919], with some bloodshed and danger of more, and there is still war and threat of war over most of the world. . . . A great deal is said and written about natural, national boundaries and learned discussions of racial antagonisms as causes of the restlessness and ill-temper of the nations."
Or consider this passage: "We are so overwhelmed with things these days that our lives are all more or less cluttered. I believe it is this, rather than a shortness of time, that gives us that feeling or hurry and almost of helplessness. Everyone is hurrying and usually just a little late. Notice the faces of the people who rush past on the streets . . . They nearly all have a strained, harassed look, and anyone you meet will tell you there is no time for anything anymore."
The book also includes an essay called "Our Stewardship of the Earth," in which Ms. Wilder talks of the criminality of destroying land. "We have only the use of it while we live and must pass it on to those who come after us."
I read Ms. Wilder's "Little House" books when I was growing up. I loved "Farmer Boy," with its descriptions of food, but I thought the books presented an unrealistically happy version of life on the prairie. Didn't Laura and Mary get tired of playing with pumpkins in the attic in "Little House in the Big Woods" when they had to stay inside all winter? Who helped Ma when she had a baby?Prairie life must have been incredibly difficult, and the world that Laura Ingalls Wilder (and daughter Rose) described seemed too whitewashed for me. I have the same criticism of the essays in "Saving Graces." Although there is a great deal of wisdom in the pages, I respond better to the work of a writer like Anne Lamott, who doesn't shy away from discussing life's ugliness and pain. Ms. Wilder writes that we need the dark to appreciate the light, but doesn't demonstrate this in her own life. Writers are supposed to show, not tell. Each essay contains a Bible passage, which in some cases seems clumsily plunked into the body of the essay. The Bible verses might have been more helpful at the beginning or end of the essays - not within them. Other reviewers referred to the essays as devotionals, which may be the more appropriate way to read this book.
Or consider this passage: "We are so overwhelmed with things these days that our lives are all more or less cluttered. I believe it is this, rather than a shortness of time, that gives us that feeling or hurry and almost of helplessness. Everyone is hurrying and usually just a little late. Notice the faces of the people who rush past on the streets . . . They nearly all have a strained, harassed look, and anyone you meet will tell you there is no time for anything anymore."
The book also includes an essay called "Our Stewardship of the Earth," in which Ms. Wilder talks of the criminality of destroying land. "We have only the use of it while we live and must pass it on to those who come after us."
I read Ms. Wilder's "Little House" books when I was growing up. I loved "Farmer Boy," with its descriptions of food, but I thought the books presented an unrealistically happy version of life on the prairie. Didn't Laura and Mary get tired of playing with pumpkins in the attic in "Little House in the Big Woods" when they had to stay inside all winter? Who helped Ma when she had a baby?Prairie life must have been incredibly difficult, and the world that Laura Ingalls Wilder (and daughter Rose) described seemed too whitewashed for me. I have the same criticism of the essays in "Saving Graces." Although there is a great deal of wisdom in the pages, I respond better to the work of a writer like Anne Lamott, who doesn't shy away from discussing life's ugliness and pain. Ms. Wilder writes that we need the dark to appreciate the light, but doesn't demonstrate this in her own life. Writers are supposed to show, not tell. Each essay contains a Bible passage, which in some cases seems clumsily plunked into the body of the essay. The Bible verses might have been more helpful at the beginning or end of the essays - not within them. Other reviewers referred to the essays as devotionals, which may be the more appropriate way to read this book.
