Basically the same story as YOUNG PIONEERS, except the YOUNG PIONEERS are David and Molly and the HURRICANE is LET ROAR around...Caroline and Charles? Why, wherever did those names come from? :) Well, if you have the chance to read them both, go on ahead, and I hope you enjoy them!

This book is a sort of "prequel" to the Little House series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Rose's descriptive prose is quite beautiful throughout the book. She used her grandparent's names, Charles and Caroline, but the storyline is Rose's own.
We romanticize the life on the Plain, living in a sod house, but Rose's book doesn't. It was nothing more than survival. I liked her depiction of Caroline as a brave young woman who really is the book's heroic figure.
The book is quick read and freely available in the public domain.

The author is Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter, and this is an alternative telling of the story of the author's grandparents (Laura's parents). Apparently in the original edition of this, the names were the same, Charles and Caroline. Here it's David and Molly.

There are a lot of the same story beats as in the Little House series: The covered wagon trek, the wheat destroyed by locusts, Molly having to spend the winter alone on the homestead while David looks for work in the east to pay debts.

The story is overall a bit tighter, but told with less of the lush detail that makes the Little House series stand out. It's also a bit darker, but that may be just a factor of having a lot of the dangers of wolves, claim-jumpers, and outlaws packed into one relatively short book.

This was an enjoyable "alternative take" on the Little House series that stands well on its own.

I bought this book on my pilgrimage to Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield, MO, the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder, one of my idols. I had read a couple of Rose's short stories before, which I enjoyed, but this was the first novel of her's that I've read. Some people believe that Rose actually wrote a large part of her mother's books. After reading Young Pioneers, that idea seems ridiculous. This book fell flat. The story will be familiar, more or less, to anybody who has read On the Banks of Plum Creek, but the change in point-of-view could've kept it interesting. While On the Banks of Plum Creek is told from a child's point of view, Young Pioneers focuses on a 16-year-old pregnant bride whose story should've been compelling. Molly and her husband, David, face what should've been heartbreaking hardships, but I can't say that I cared much. There was just no life in Molly and David. I felt no connection with them, or even between them.

I have always been drawn to stories about the brave pioneers who left the comforts of home to face the unknown. I especially love the stories of women and the challenges they faced. How did these women survive? They were constantly fighting the elements, searching for water, and food. They survived with so little yet prospered. With hard, backbreaking work, and the grace of God, their stories enthrall me.

When I ordered this book, I thought it was going to be a story about David and Molly. I was surprised to see Charles and Caroline as the characters instead. I got excited, thinking it was going to be about their early years together. As I read I kept saying to myself, "No, this isn't how this happened" having read all the Little House books many, many times over. I came to realize that this was just a fictional story Rose wrote, using events from her mother's stories and combining them together. As such, I would have much rather the names had been kept as David and Molly. I liked the story, but it was a lot of telling and not showing. I never felt like I was a part of the story, inside Caroline's head. It was just events listed out. Rose didn't inherit her mother's talent for description, which I believe Laura got from having to describe everything to Mary after she became blind. A cute little story but it could have been more.

A cute and quick little read that made me feel feelings. It was a little simple, but there were enough descriptions to make me feel like the world was real. Recommend this to anyone who is on a Little House on the Prairie binge.

I loved this story by Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. Although this was fiction, you knew the author had experienced or had been told by those living those early prairie years, such as her mother, some of these experiences. The grasshopper incident where they swarm in and little by little eat the wheat stalks Molly's husband had slaved to plant. It brought you back to those prairie days and the real hardships the pioneers faced. However, there were several areas where the author could have explained things better like the last scene in the book. Her scanty dugout's stovepipe bent then the pipe slid into each other. A crack opened and Molly hears a human cry. I had difficulty picturing this scene. The author needed to explain this better. This is an easy read, and if have time, you could read this in one setting. I recommend this for anyone wanting to learn about those early pioneer days. God bless.

This short book gives a glimpse of what life was really like settling the vast American prairie. Instead of the romance we see harsh circumstances, but the reader is also treated to the strength and courage of the women and mothers who helped settle our country. It reminds me of stories told by my grandmothers when I was a little girl.

I planned to read this over a couple days, but I couldn't put it down and finished it in one evening. I was surprised at how many things I could relate to, impressed by Molly's strength, and grateful for the luxuries of modern day life, like being able to communicate quickly with people who are far away. I'm looking forward to discussing this with book group.

This book, written by the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder is along the same lines as the "Little House" books. It is an enjoyable, quick read detailing the struggles of a young couple setting out into the frontier. The characters names are Charles and Caroline, and with their characterizations, seemed that it could have been about the author's grandparents, Pa and Ma in "Little House," except that the plot of the story didn't seem to match up with the early books of that series.
Other than wondering if any of it was based on fact, because I like to know, I enjoyed the story about their lives in a dugout, surviving a winter alone on the prairies, and the fierce pride and love for each other that kept them going.

Apparently newer editions are published under a different title with new character names. This probably alleviates some confusion, but I think the original title is very fitting.

My favorite quote from the book, when Caroline first peeked outside after a blizzard: "Air and sun and snow were the whole visible world--a world neither alive nor dead, and terrible because it was alien to life and death, and ignorant of them.
In that instant she know the infinite smallness, weakness, of life in the lifeless universe. She felt the vast, insensate forces against which life itself is a rebellion. Infinitely small and weak was the spark of warmth in a living heart. Yet valiantly the tiny heart continues to beat. Tired, weak, burdened by its own fears and sorrows, still it persisted, indomitably it continues to exist, and in bare existence itself, without assurance of victory, even without hope, in its indomitable existence among vast, incalculable, lifeless forces, it was invincible.
Caroline was never able to say, even in her own thoughts, what she knew when she first came out of the dugout after the October blizzard. It was a moment of inexpressible terror, courage and pride. She was aware of human dignity. She felt that she was alive, and that God was with life."

Excellent!

Like many of us, I was a fan of the Little House books when I was a child. I was researching and reading up on the author of those books, and works of her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. This was one of the 2 books I found on Kindle. I thought it might be a children's book, but its not. It gives wonderful historical accounts of American history, particularly of the grasshopper/pocket infestation in the 1870's. I think of the cities and towns that exist today in the same areas this book is set in, and I marvel that it all began with these hard working, brave people who settled the west! Not for sissies!

The prose in several parts of this book is beautiful! I look forward to reading more of Wilder's work! It's beautifully written and historically accurate!