A bit of a disappointment if you have read the Little House books. This novel is largely a rehash of events described in the Little House series, with names changed. And it lacks the authenticity of Laura's voice. You can argue that it's more realistic than the idealised world of Laura's childhood but it's poor compensation.

I thought this book was okay. I know that I would not be able to be by myself with my child/children all alone for a whole season, especially back in those days. What strong and courageous women they were to have to endure all that they had to go through.

Very short. My edition 118 pp. Most events will be familiar to readers of Lane's mother's books, the Little House series. I can't recommend this to modern readers, though, as these naive children were destroying the prairie, enabling the devastation of the Native ways of life, and still thought themselves superior to immigrants who weren't as 'tough' as they. I hope they taught their children the value of frugality and the risk of debt, at least.

Why was Rose Wilder Lane largely forgotten as a writer while her mother reigns eternal in the annals of American literature?

While she had an eye for story exposition and structure, she lacked her mother's lyrical ability and poetic way of describing the world around her. Rose writes her family's history in a short little novel that sold well at the time it was published but has since faded into obscurity.

Laura wrote the same story, but the way in which she told it seared its memory into the souls of the American experience. Rose's attempt falls flat at the wayside.

So...I would have loved this if I hadn't already read her mother's work. But I have, and while, Rse might bring the plot, Laura brings detail, atmosphere, and how-to to the stories. There is overlap here, and you will recognize stuff from Wilder's life, but it's rushed. Just re-read the Long Winter. It's better.

Fans of little house would like this short novel.

This was the first book I've read by her and it was very well written. I wanted more when it came to the end and I really liked Molly's character.

Rose Wilder Lane is best known by many readers as the daughter of Almanzo Wilder and Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the "Little House on the Prairie" series. But Lane was an author in her own right; she wrote freelance articles for publications like The Saturday Evening Post, was a Vietnam War correspondent for Woman's Day and wrote both fiction and non-fiction. One of Lane's books young adult readers and fans of the "Little House" books should read is "Young Pioneers."

The setting for most of the story is along a creek David names Wild Plum Creek for two plum trees that grow near where he builds a sod house. David and Molly have just married and soon after their arrival on the prairie, David John is born. Other difficult circumstances face the young couple over the course of a year that will seem familiar to readers of the "Little House" books.

It has been speculated for years that Lane is the true author of the "Little House" books since she had more experience writing for profit and knowing what publishers looked for in a piece of fiction. This reviewer believes Lane certainly helped her mother edit the books that children have loved for generations. But Lane's style of writing is different from that of Wilder. Although there are certainly similarities, the language is somehow different and paints a more detached image than that of the stories penned by Wilder. Perhaps that is because for Rose Wilder Lane, they were only stories she had heard growing up and for Laura Ingalls Wilder they were events that she had actually experienced.

Whatever one chooses to believe about the involvement of Lane in the publication of Wilder's books, both women have left lasting contributions to the world of both fiction and non-fiction. For anyone who has read the "Little House" books and nearly everything else about the Ingalls and Wilder families, "Young Pioneers" is an essential piece of literature.

This is a perfect little novel that deserves to be much more widely read (and can be read in a few hours!). I'm not sure why it isn't more often vaunted among lovers of American history and anyone who enjoys Laura Ingalls Wilder.

It was published right at the time when Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie first appeared, and it's based on many of the same events that formed the storyline, a few years later, of another Little House book. There are obvious similarities in terms of plot and circumstance: newlywed pioneers (he a fiddler, she a quiet woman) file a claim on land with a dugout and barn near a creek called Plum Creek; they raise a promising wheat crop, buy a reaper on credit, and begin building a large wooden farmhouse; but a few days before harvest, grasshoppers descend, ruining the crop and nearly reducing the couple to bankruptcy. The rest of the book tells of how they scrape by through the ensuing winter.

Lane's style is similar to Wilder's -- uncluttered, apt, poetic -- although the daughter's is slightly more literary or "novelish" than the mother's. I love both versions of the style: they somehow manage to be simple but not stark, elegant but not florid.

But for all these similarities, Let the Hurricane Roar is a very different work from any of the Little House books (and definitely worth reading on its own merits). It's a coming-of-age story for the young wife, Molly, whose selfhood, personality, resourcefulness, and marriage mature beautifully even as they are sorely tried and stretched to their limits. Molly's perception of her own experience is one of the richest things about the book. Another rich aspect is the descriptions, which are never cumbersome or overwrought but add, sparingly, just the right amount of vivid detail.

I have long known that Rose Wilder Lane was an established writer before her mother became one. But since I never heard her books recommended as worth reading, I assumed that she wrote with the cynicism and subversiveness you often find in adult literature of early 20th century (think D.H. Lawrence and other post WWI authors). This book is totally unlike what I expected: full of relish for the good things of the world, full of optimism, and (perhaps not intentionally) a deeply Christian tale -- it's about as perfect a parable of Providence as I can imagine.

It has sometimes been marketed as a book for young readers, and I sort of hate that, not because it's not appropriate for a young audience (the only damning thing about it is, actually, the word "damn" that appears a handful of times), but because it stands head and heels above most juvenile and YA literature and deserves to be read by any adult. All the same, I wish someone had told me what a good book this was when I was 12 and obsessed with stories of westward expansion -- but then, maybe it's even nicer to discover it as an adult and fall in love with something totally new under a favorite topic of girlhood.

Little House fans will recognize many of the elements of the story. Rose Wilder Lane clearly paid attention to her parents’ tales of pioneer life.

This was a fine book to read in a snowstorm. I enjoyed Minnesota and Iowa talked about as "out East."

There are moments that shine about perseverance in the midst of trial. Roughly two years pass in the novel, and we get acquainted with the demands and needs in the frontier. What is required for survival: friendship, companionship, fuel, wheat, hope? What makes life beautiful and worth the sacrifices of trials? Men and women answer those questions differently in this novel, and the differences are worth pondering.

The novel introduces several characters, but focuses on David and Molly's struggles to survive in a dugout on the prairie. David's need to leave Molly and resulting prolonged absence forms the most interesting part of the story for me. We get to see Molly grow her capacities in a little dugout in the middle of winter. It is a quick read well worth the time. I only wish there was more to read about Molly and David.

I read this as an adolescent and really loved it. I found it on my shelf and decided to give it another go, to see how well I remembered it. This story was written by Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane originally titled Let the Hurricane Roar. Lane was a real American patriot; maybe today one might call her a Libertarian. Her devotion to the work ethic, of pride in ownership and accomplishment, and illustrating how these young pioneers truly saw themselves as building a new nation and their pride in that work in spite of overwhelming hardships is inspiring. A lot of the book mirrors situations or experiences in Lane's mother's own life from the Little House books. Highly recommend this for younger audiences, although a call to return to self-reliance and a can-do attitude should not be lost on today's adults, either!