Having grown up with the Little House books, this meticulously-researched biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder brings a completely new perspective to my youthful impressions. A pioneer settler who lived through relentless cycles of failure and poverty, who was eventually writing as proto-libertarian propaganda in the midst of the Dust Bowl and Depression… what a complicated woman. Don’t get me started on her daughter, an amoral, mentally ill, possibly psychopathic yellow journalist. Phew, what a story.