I really enjoyed this book in the Little House series. In this book, Laura finally marries Almanzo Wilder after courting for three years. Her sister Mary also graduates from blind school college, and Laura teaches herself at a little shanty town about 12 miles away from her home.

3.5 stars

I never read this series as a child, but reading it as an adult I definitely approach it with a more critical eye than I probably would have done as a kid. This book didn't have lots of problematic stuff like some of the others in the series so I gave it a higher rating. One of my favorite things about this book is when Laura is proposed to and she tells Almanzo that she won't say the obey part of the vows. She tells him that she doesn't plan on obeying him, and he says that he doesn't know any decent man who expects his wife to. I like this and it was probably a pretty controversial thing to put into a book at this time.

Because I sometimes and even rather often have the tendency to not really care too much for so-called and specifically courting stories, I did originally approach Laura Ingalls Wilder’s 1944 Newbery Honour winning These Happy Golden Years (being the eighth of the Little House on the Prairie novels and which I never read during my childhood, which I actually only read for the first time just recently) with a bit of personal trepidation (as I was of course more than a trifle worried that I would find the minute details of Laura Ingalls’ and Almanzo Wilder’s romance and marriage a bit dragging and textually tedious). But no, I really and fortunately, happily absolutely had no reason to worry with regard to the above. For yes indeed, Laura and Almanzo’s love story as it is related in These Happy Golden Years has not only been engagingly penned, there is also quite a bit of gentle and delightful humour and imagination present in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s printed words, with me especially adoring how Laura and Almanzo basically court each other with the latter’s, with Manly’ colts, how Laura totally manages to trounce Nellie Oleson and finally how both manage to also thwart Almanzo’s bossy and full of herself older sister Eliza trying to foist an expensive and huge wedding on them by marrying in haste and thus giving Eliza a total fait accomplit.

Combined with much other wonderful and enlightening historically accurate and authentic feeling details about Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life from when she gets her first teaching certificate until she finally ties the proverbial knot with Almanzo Wilder (such as for example Laura’s first rather daunting teaching job away from home during a very cold winter, boarding with a majorly dysfunctional family but thankfully being picked up every Friday afternoon by Almanzo so she can spend a few days relaxing and recharging at home, and yes also appreciated details about older and blind sister Mary visiting from college), These Happy Golden Years has been very much a sweet delight to read. And I actually also do tend to think of These Happy Golden Years as being the series conclusion, since in my humble opinion, the following book, The First Four Years is text and writing style wise just too different for me to consider it as part of the main narrative body of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series.

Laura working in town, Mary off at the blind school and Almanzo, these are more of what I remember.

Didn’t remember it took three years of courting for them to get married.

THE SERIES ENDS HERE, I CAN'T HEAR YOU.

"It was a fresh, clear morning; the meadow larks were singing and the sunshine drinking the dew from the grass." I love this line. What can I say? I'm a sucker for nature porn.

"Laura thought how wild and beautiful it must have been when the twin lakes were one, when buffalo and antelope roamed the prairie around the great lake and came there to drink, when wolves and coyotes and foxes lived on the banks and wild geese, swans, herons, cranes, ducks, and gulls nested and fished and flew there in countless numbers."

There is a lot of nostalgia in this book. By the late 1800s, the wild prairies weren't quite so wild, and Laura herself was less wild. In the above passage, Laura laments the changed, diminished landscape, a landscape she and other settlers tamed and altered through their ruthless, morally questionable westward expansion. But the passage also points to what I love about the series: Laura's wistfulness, her wildness, independence, restlessness, her explorer's spirt. I think I identified with these characteristics as a child, and I definitely identify with them as an adult, even if I'm outwardly geographically stable, and well, settled. I want to go west too, at least metaphorically. I want sprawling prairies, lakes, wolves, cranes, meadow larks singing, and the sun drinking dew from the grass. There's a longing for the unknown, the undiscovered in this series, and I relate to that longing on a visceral level. It's funny because I assumed that the prairies WERE wild when Laura lived there, but I guess some of us are just always chasing a romanticized past. The passage reminded me a little bit of Midnight in Paris, where the main character believes life was only real, meaningful and rich in the past, that the present is somehow cheapened.

I thought Laura's courtship with Almanzo was interesting. She was 15 when they began courting (he was 10 years older) and their courtship consisted of Almanzo giving her rides to and from her horrible teaching job in his sleigh, both of them sitting in silence. Later, she allowed herself to go "sleighing" in town in winter or buggy riding in spring with him, also mostly in silence, though sometimes each made a stray observation about the weather or landscape. After three years of this, it's only natural they marry. It was hard to feel their love, and I found myself wondering: Did Laura love Almanzo, or was marriage different back then? I suppose a good, kind (if pathologically quiet) man was hard to find in De Smet in those days, and Almanzo was a catch in that respect.

There's a great passage towards the end of the book where Laura goes to school for the last time before her marriage to Almanzo. She sits in her chair to observe the moment, to let sink in the fact that she's no longer a schoolgirl; this phase of her life is done, never to be revisited, despite all the happiness it gave her. There's a similar moment when Laura fully realizes that when she marries, she'll be leaving her family home for good, returning only as a visitor, and you can sense the heaviness and sadness. As someone who frequently fails to observe and pay due respect to transitions and achievements (I got married in a courthouse, didn't attend my high school, college or graduate school graduations, rarely celebrate achievements, etc.), these two passages in the book made me stop for a minute and rethink my modus operandi. Maybe part of what gives life depth is mourning the end of our personal eras a little bit, and recognizing when things will never go back to being how they were. Maybe if I recognized transitions and changes more, I'd have deeper, more detailed memories.

It's been wonderful to reread this book during this time. It was a nice escape from the realities of quarantine and coronavirus, and transported me in geography and time. It's interesting, but I remember very clearly the books I read while I was on maternity leave, and I have a feeling I will remember very clearly the books I read during the coronavirus pandemic. How's that for attaching significance to a moment???

Boy a lot of things happen in this slim volume. If there's anything worth noting about reading this series as a whole as an adult, it's that pacing is a real detail here. We get a whole book about a single long winter and then books like this one where Laura goes from 15 and starting as a teacher to 18 and married with her own home...in fewer pages.

Takeaways from book eight: Laura hates teaching, Laura wants to get married sooner so she can stop teaching, Pa really likes taking Laura's money for things he doesn't need, and Laura doesn't want to have to have a traditional wedding. She gets married in black cashmere at home and won't say the "obey" part of the vows.

But she doesn't believe in women's rights or needing the vote. That was laid clear.

"I liked the part where they got married because they got to dress up really nice. They had a really small wedding instead of the big on Almanzo's sister was planning because I think that would have been too much. Before they got married they saw a tornado while on a wagon ride, good thing they didn't get sucked up." -Cadee, age 8

I think this is my favorite of all the Little House books. So many happy things happen for all of them and who doesn't love a good romance?!

Probably my favorite out of the whole series!

Reread from childhood. A great, stress-free read which is exactly what I needed. This is the most romance heavy of the series. It's all about Laura and Almanzo's relationship.

I so loved this charming courtship and the story of Laura becoming 'young lady' and her first struggling as a teacher. I simply adored and savored it.