I have read this book several times since I was a teenager and I still love it. Just a nice story with strong characters, a bit of tension and a good ending. I needed a book like this at this point in time.

This is one may be by Rose Wilder but it is not like Little House books. Pretty skimpy on the details. It's ok. Pioneer books in general make you think about how soft we are today. Help us all if we lose our technology and have to survive the way people used to. lol...

It sort of was like Little House on the Prairie. So much so that I can see why ppl say she wrote the Little House Books using her mother's name.

1 star is pushing it and really is only due to my love of Laura Ingalls Wilder whose story was blatantly stolen from her daughter for this book that is not even particularly compelling.
This novel was mentioned so often in the last book I read (Prairie Fires) that I had to give it a shot. It wasn’t great. Rose Wilder Lane was a real piece of work! And a thief of other people’s experiences, her mother literally wrote the same stories but better.

The author is the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Rose served as Laura's editor and some have suggested her ghost writer. I have read Pioneer Girl, Laura's autobiography unpublished in her lifetime. After reading this, I find it very unlikely.
Much of the material in this book is taken from Pioneer Girl and is Found in On The Banks of Plum Creek, The Long Winter, and even snippets in By The Shores of Silver Lake. The stories are fleshed out in LIW's books. They are rushed through in Lane's. They live in a sod house on Plum Creek, grasshoppers, terrible winter, and so on. There is no sense of place or setting. David and Molly got engaged, married, left Wisconsin, traveled to South Dakota territory, found a place to live, and had a baby by page 8.
The editing was lacking. When it was originally published, it was called Let the Hurricane Roar and the young newlyweds are Charles and Caroline. It was retitled as Young Pioneers and they become David and Molly -- nearly all of the time. At least once I noted David was called Charles and there were typos.

I was amazed to find this at a library's sale and see that the daughter of Laura Ingalls was a writer too and had written this book. I have to have love in a book, so I was thrilled to read the summary about a young married couple in the 1800s. On the very first page it proved it was as sweet as I hoped it would be as it delivered on the type of details I like.

It starts off saying that Molly and David had played together as kids and had said they would be married as soon as they were old enough. He'd tease her that he had never actually asked her to marry him.

I could relate to Molly in that she's quiet and shy and not pretty. She was amazed that she had won David. He's laughing and bold, a daring hunter, dancer, fiddler and fighter. On Sunday afternoons his family would spend the day with hers.

David was 18 and would have stayed to work for his dad until he was 21 but his dad was generous and let him marry now. He gave him the wagon and team early too. Molly's parents gave her two blankets and two pillows, a pot, pan, and skillet. They gave her food and a book of poems. She brought her patchwork quilts she had made. David had his gun and fiddle. Their families sent for a bible and the circuit rider wrote their marriage certificate in it with pages for births and deaths.

He shot game every day. When they needed supplies like flour, tea, and sugar, they camped at a settlement and he worked for it. He bought her presents whenever he had money, like a box covered in shells with a middle in the lid, and 15 yards of calico. When they were going to have a baby he got a job with the railroad company. She had to stay at the railroad camp. He built her a sod house and left her a gun.

I didn't like how fast it moved. It cut off their childhood completely and their courtship and jumped to them already having been married and then being pregnant. It was on pg. 6 that we learned they were going to have a baby, so soon after it started. And having a 16 year old married and pregnant isn't really reader-friendly.

David got a homestead out in the middle of nowhere. A woman was mad when she heard they weren't leaving east for the winter and asked if he wanted to kill her. I liked that he was afraid for her and was ready to go east.

It was a heart-warming story how a Swedish man came to their home and mimed that his wife was lonely, so Molly went to her house to visit her and taught her English words.

I didn't really care for David, the way he called her a goose when she didn't understand something or hadn't thought of something he had. Like with the wheat, she said that's nice, and he was like nice? And proceeded to tell her how much money it would make and called her a goose. When he wanted a tree claim she pointed out it would work him to death and he called her a goose and said he'd hire out. It was like verbal abuse, like he thought she was an idiot. When he was going to show her the wheat he snatched the baby up like he was a bundle and then when he cried he handed him back over to her without even realizing it.
He told her that her hair's silky, and he guessed he forgot to mention it but she's pretty nice to have around. He's kind of glad he's got her. At least he burst out thank god he's able to take care of her and the baby as he ought to, because he wasn't looking too good. She's "pretty" nice to have around? He's "kind of" glad? No.
He bought up all this stuff they didn't need, counting on the wheat crop before he sold it. Of course we knew it would be ruined.
When she told him to rest after he'd been battling to keep the grasshoppers from the wheat, he got mad at her and said he wasn't a baby that needs sleep. She told him later to rest and he got mad and cursed, told her not to turn against him and left like he hated her.
When the wheat was lost he raged at her, asking why won't she say something? At least he admitted he was a fool to buy all that stuff and get in debt.
He came home after not getting a job with the railroad and was mad at her, he brusquely told her to run along when she started unhitching the team, said he guessed he wasn't so beat that he couldn't unhitch his own team. Just because he was feeling that a man had no right to a wife he couldn't take care of didn't excuse his behavior.

Molly wasn't much more likable. David told her of the men forced to leave and go west because there were no jobs, and she asked why don't they eat rabbits? She said it didn't have anything to do with them and they weren't going to beg. She realized David was prideful and he didn't want to lose it in front of her because he'd hate himself.
It was nice that she would love him just as much if he couldn't take care of her.
She felt that if they left David and everyone would know that he hadn't been strong enough for the West. How mean!
Mr. Svenson cursed the whole country because the land wouldn't feed anyone and Molly got mad and said the country's fine and no country would feed you with a spoon. She thought that it's men that make a country and what's wrong with him? When he said they were leaving, she felt that he was giving up and he'd always be a hired man. So judgmental.

The sweet story was ruined as Molly and Mrs. Svenson felt awkward and embarrassed with each other that Molly had so much more than she did. She didn't even want to tell her of the new house. I was like stop thinking of it then! I felt so bad for the other woman and wished she'd give her something to help them out.

The horses worked too hard to be driven for pleasure so she had to walk to the neighbors.

She wrote of nursing the baby. The baby's mouth lost her breast.

It was sweet that David wrote her saying try not to miss him like he was missing her. He said he was never going to leave her again as long as they live, and told her to write to him.

It was Molly's suggestion for David to go east so they wouldn't lose the homestead. And then when he wrote that he'd broken his leg and wouldn't be coming back, she decided to go back to the town site. Giving up, Molly? Can't hold the homestead without the Svensons? What a quitter. I was so irritated with her attitude because they had been nothing but good to her, Mr. Svenson traveling miles with his hungry oxen to pick up David's letters for her and waiting for news of David's return; they were going to wait for him to come back before they left, taking time out of their long journey to Minnesota before the winter.

It was heartbreaking to read about the herd of cattle whose breath froze over their eyes and faces. They were all huddled together and dying. She shot one for meat, kept a female for her own, and freed the rest. I was so glad that she helped the rest of them and I felt so had for those poor animals!

It was admirable that she resolved to kill anyone who tried to enter the house. She knew there was no good to come from that and an honest person wouldn't be out in a blizzard. But when a man stumbled into the stovepipe she took pity on him knowing he would die in the deep snow.

It was such a surprise that it was David. I didn't expect him to come in the winter. I liked that he was teasing her, saying didn't he say he'd come back as soon as he could? And how serious he was when he got onto her for staying there alone. He said "Molly, God only knows what I went through when they told me in town that Svensons had quit and you were out here alone. Don't you ever do another fool trick like that. Do you suppose I care a damn for anything in the world compared to you?"

I could not believe how it ended. They were talking about things that had happened to them; he was warned he couldn't make it before the storm but he thought he could. She knew that the baby wouldn't always live in a dugout and there would be more a spacious setting and that's how it ended. What the heck?! We don't know when they'll pay what they owe, how they'll make money, or when they'll be able to build the house. What a colossal letdown.

This book is by Rose Wilder Lane, who was the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her husband, Almanzo. This book was first published under the title, "Let the Hurricane Roar." This was a quick read but a really good one. Rose was a good writer in her own right and quite an interesting character outside of her mother's shadow. This is the story of Molly and David, newlyweds starting their own claim on the prairie.

I had an idea of what this was, and it was mostly correct. These characters and the family is different from the characters in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series, but a lot of the depictions and happenings are similar and seem to be pulled from Rose's mother's memories.

This couple sets out west, and settles into a dugout on the Plum Creek, sounding just like the one where Laura lived, only they just have the baby boy. They also mention the Swedish neighbors, and the grasshoppers. I feel like this book is pretty simplistic in it's depictions, especially the first half stating what is happening versus showing us the experiences of the characters. But it's done in such a way that romanticizes the westward movement of the time. The 2nd half really digs into the couple's story and what they feel, and what happens while they are experiencing hardship.

This book really makes me wonder why Rose wrote this story though. There is some ponderings about who wrote this particular pioneer story first, Laura or Rose, and if Laura took Rose's idea of the story and made it her own. I still enjoyed this single short novel though, I felt it was beautifully described.

It's like someone took "On the Banks of Plum Creek," "By the Shores of Silver Lake" and "The Long Winter," combined them and rewrote them from Caroline Ingalls' point of view -- in fact, the main characters were initially named Charles and Caroline, until Laura Ingalls Wilder (Rose's mother), who was in the middle of the "Little House" series, objected. But whether named Charles and Caroline or David and Molly, they're recognizable to anyone who has read "Little House," though Charles/David is more emotional and Caroline/Molly is less so than their better-known counterparts. This raises an issue of who "owns" experiences held in common between two writers -- it was a major issue in the marriage of Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald while he was having trouble writing "Tender is the Night" and she wrote "Save Me the Waltz," according to Nancy Milford's biography of Zelda -- but Laura eventually decided Rose had as much of a right to the story as she did, since Charles and Caroline were Rose's grandparents, but she thought Rose should use other names, and Rose obliged. ANYWAY, in this book (which used to be called "Let the Hurricane Roar," after a hymn), David and Molly get married as soon as they're old enough and go west as teenagers to take a claim, and end up with a claim on Wild Plum Creek. They have to pass the Lone Cottonwood (see "By the Shores of Silver Lake") to get there. They have their firstborn, a son, in the dugout. They haven't moved out of their dugout yet when the grasshoppers arrive; David goes back east to look for work; he gets a job, only to be injured when his employer lets something heavy fall on his foot, but the employer pays for his medical care and room and board until David is well enough to come home. Meanwhile, Molly's neighbors move away, but Molly stays because she doesn't want to lose the claim, and sticks out a Long Winter-type series of storms buries the dugout and contrives to keep her baby fed and warm in spite of everything.

Stole her mother’s stories but can’t match her writing. It’s drier than the prairie after the grasshoppers

This book was extremely popular when it was first published in the early 1930s; Rose Wilder Lane was much more famous than her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, from whom she cribbed most of the material for this book.

I re-read this for an online course about Wilder's life and writing after having read it first many years ago.The current edition has the main character names changed from Charles and Caroline to David and Molly in order to create more distance between the Little House parents and these characters. That in itself is rather telling-- and in the OCLC notes in the front of the book, the characters are mis-named David and Caroline. It's all rather confusing.

The narrative reads as much of popular fiction did in the early 1930s, meant to appeal to about an eighth-grade reading level without a lot of nuance or character development. The plot is taken directly from many of the Little House books, including the dugout, the grasshopper plague, the long winter, and the Scandinavian neighbors. The course I'm taking reveals that daughter Rose published this book without letting her mother know the content, and that Laura felt quite betrayed that the material from her own life which she had let her daughter look over had been used for profit rather than saved for her own writing. Fortunately for all of us, she continued on with her series and did so much better than this piece.

It must be remembered that those who heaped praise on this book had not yet had the benefit of reading the Little House series, written by Laura and heavily edited by Rose. Their collaboration produced some of the finest children's literature still extant today. This is a faint premonition of that, perhaps a toe in the water; worth looking at with a critical eye. It provided a public struck by the Depression some role models the age of their grandparents, Americans pushing westward who overcame poor economy, isolation, and terrible weather to ultimately enjoy success. As such, it served its purpose to inspire and give a sensational glimpse of pioneer life. At only 152 pages, it's a very quick read and probably important if you are interested in reading everything in the Little House world.

I have been spoiled by the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, so reading this book by her daughter about events in her mother’s life seemed jarring. However, not a bad story about the misery of settling up a claim!