If you love Little House on the Prarie books then you will enjoy hearing all about its author Laura Ingalls Wilders's spiritual legacy. I don't think you necessarily need to be a person of faith to enjoy this book. The book is well researched and it shares Laura's story from a very young age. A recommended read.

This book does an interesting job of bringing out points of faithful times found in Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" Books. Various other things included are photos and recipes from the time as well. Readers also get a look at pioneer life including beliefs and culture. The idea was fascinating and fitting to the Little House books. It was nice to have the ideas of the Wilder’s and pioneer faith in one book. We learn how her family interacted within their life and religion throughout their everyday lives. While it was researched and that was noticed it was disorganized overall. This disorganization took away from the book for me. I did enjoy it, but it was sometimes unclear of the point in places. Fans may still find it interesting.

I grew up watching Little House on the Prairie and read all the books many times over. This book is a wonderful book with spiritual insight into who Laura was and what her faith was. Her faith defined her life, as evident by her books and from her own words. I enjoyed reading a different take on her beliefs and more defined as a true story than what we knew from the LHOTP TV show and the books written by Laura. There was a lot of information that at times seemed repetitive, but overall this is a great book for learning about Laura's faith and what helped shaped her life and the choices she made during her life.

Thank you Net Galley for the opportunity to review this book for my honest opinion. While I appreciate the research that went into this book, it was kind of unorganized, long winded and repetitive in several places. I grew up loving the Little House on the Prairie books and was interested in learning more about Laura's life but the author mainly quotes other writers who have written about her.and her family. This book might appeal to people who haven't read anything about Laura Ingalls Wilder and can follow the convoluted and repetitive narrative.

Our family lives near Walnut Grove and all of our children have been immersed in Little House all of their lives. All five of my kids and my husband have acted in the summer Wilder Pageant every year for over fifteen years and we picnic and play on the banks of Plum Creek. We've also researched the real stories of the people of the books, from Laura to Reverend Alden (now there's a questionable character in real life, yikes). So I am a bit biased towards books on this subject.

I found the book to be a fun read, full of excerpts and interviews. It's very obvious to most of us how strong Laura's faith was, but it's an interesting book in that the author really tried to delve into the subject. Unfortunately, Laura was very private about her views other than what's in the books and already well know, so the author had to fumble a bit to fill this book. I didn't mind that, but I just enjoy reading about Laura and Rose, who was not nearly as religious. I liked the fact that Hines didn't gloss over the frequently awful things Rose did, like kicking Laura and Almanzo out of their own house for 8 years so she could live in it (she build them a Sears catalog house nearby). He doesn't make Rose out to be awful but he also doesn't try to hide some of the things she did. He also points out that Rose and her female author friend lived with Laura and Almanzo for a time and it was not a large house. I would love to know more about what that was like for all involved.

The book is a bit scattered. There's a random chapter of church recipes from people in Laura's life and the comments mostly say that they failed when the author tried them. That said, I liked reading it and learned a few things. Don't go expecting a lot of new material after all of the dozens of books that have already been written about Laura, especially if you've already read a lot about her. This is an easy read, though, and one I enjoyed.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.

I regularly watch reruns of Little House on the Prairies, and the show still can make me laugh or cry. I have not read the books though!

I was delighted, therefore, to be offered an ARC of this book.

I found the information about her involvements with church somewhat dry and uninteresting. The accounts about her depression, life on the farm, and relationship with her daughter made for much better reading.

I do wish that the author incorporated the details contained in the Appendices into the main part of the book. As it is, things seem a bit unorganised.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. This is my honest review.

This book is an in-depth look at Laura Ingels Wilder's Christian beliefs, through her writing. But it also is an an in-depth look at her daughter, Rose Wilder's writing; & how her beliefs contrasted with Laura's. It's not light reading, but more suited to a scholar or theological reader. I was able to read, "A Prairie Girl's Faith" thanks to NetGalley.

A very interesting and informative read. Was lovely to learn more about Laura, I’ve loved Little House on the Prairie since been a child and still like to watch/read whatever I can about it.

Before I read this book, I didn’t know much about Laura Ingall’s Wilder. This book gives us a deeper understanding of the famous author as well as her spiritual journey. This book reminds that God I’d always there for even during our troubled times.

Laura Ingalls Wilder has always been a hero to me. I loved reading each of her books multiple times and have watched every episode of The Little House on the Prairie TV show. When I saw this book about Laura's faith life, I was excited to dive in. The book talked about hymns that Laura would have sang and found comfort in, as well as her history as part of the Congregationalist church. I found it surprising that Laura did not actually attend formal church until the third book of her series, On the Banks of Plum Creek. It made sense, but I did not remember that from when I read her books as a child. Laura's mother was responsible for her knowledge about the Bible because she would drill her and help her to memorize scripture. Her father was a trustee of the Union Congregational Church at one time, and even helped to found two churches. This book also gave details about some of the pastors that would have shaped her faith life, such as the Reverend Alden. Laura continued to attend church after her marriage to Almanzo, and later attended a Methodist church. She often reflected about religion in the Ruralist column that she wrote later in life, although she tended to see her faith life as personal, not to be on display.

The book also contained recipes from people that Laura would have known (including her mother), and the appendix contained many interesting details about De Smet (where her parents ended up settling down) and about her life from people who knew her. As the author stated, the Ingalls represent, to many of us, the great American family. I enjoyed reading this book, and learning even more about Laura's life. I would recommend this book to any "Little House" fan.

Growing up watching Little House on the Prairie and reading the books made me want to read this book. This book took me back to my childhood memories of reading the books. But it also made me focus on the kind of faith that they would have to have to live in the prairie. After reading this book, it made me realize that all of the things we have now, don't matter as much compared to the faith that we have as a family. I need to step back and look at everything that we have including our faith with God. I have a better look at what it takes to live in the midwest and what they went through on a daily basis. I'm glad that I was able to review this book and now it's a favorite for me.

[Note:  This book was provided free of charge by Waterbrook Press/Net Gallery.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.]

Like many kids, especially those who grew up in rural areas, I read the Little House In The Prairie Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder [1].  Even during my adulthood (before the time I started writing this blog), I had obtained a full set of the novels, including The First Four Years, which I gave to a young woman in Chile I unsuccessfully courted, as she was looking for decent but also relatively simple books in English to read.  Like many readers, then, I have a certain understanding of and fondness for the novels and at least some interest in the person behind them.  No doubt some people will have made pilgrimages to the places referred to in the novels or to the home of the Wilders in the Ozarks area of Missouri, where they lived for much of their adult life, but I have not done that as of yet.  Even so, this book does a great job at showing the importance of religious faith, both the private faith practiced in the home and the public faith of being in a town-based church, to Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family (apart from her somewhat wayward daughter Rose).

This book's contents take up about 150 pages including the lengthy notes, in the version of the book that I read, divided up into ten chapters with two appendices.  The author, after an introduction, begins his book by talking about pioneer faith and the difficulties that those in the West had in building churches and in remaining faithful while isolated (1).  He then discusses the lengthy journey of the Ingalls and others who continued to search for a promised land where they could find a good living away from the crowded areas of the East (2).  He discusses how both men and women were partners in faith and how this was true in the Ingalls family in particular as well as with Laura and Alonzo Wilder (3).  The author then brings up how Rose Wilder Lane was much less spiritual and how this led her to write much darker material about mankind's struggle with nature in the absence of faith (4).  The author then turns his attention to looking at the mixture of Mary and Martha within the fretful Laura, a mixture that is common to many people (5).  The contentious relationship between Laura and Rose about the Ingalls family saga is then explored with a look to the collaborative nature of the efforts (6).  The author turns his attention then to how the Little House series was constructed from the raw materials of research and memory and imagination (7).  From this the author looks to the music and hymns of the spiritual life of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family (8).  A bit of a cookbook follows with some old-timey recipes from the time (9) before the author discusses what Laura Ingalls Wilder means to us as a representative from a "Great American Family" (10).  The book then closes with two appendices on remembering the De Smet of olden times and an interview with Laura's friend and Missouri neighbor Neta Seal.

What a reader gets out of this book is a somewhat nuanced understanding of the importance of faith in the early frontier.  Those early settlers who were motivated to have formal religious services were led to meet in whatever structures were available and often had to meet across confessional boundaries, and thus develop a broad tolerance among Protestants and even including Catholics.  Likewise, religion depended on the home and the importance of attending services for families, especially those families who lived on homesteads out of town who had to travel into town weekly for services, and at other time for various other charitable organizations.  The author does a good job at conveying the work that had to be done by ladies who were often considered only auxiliaries to the men in such groups.  The author skillfully captures the change in ambitions for women, Laura Ingalls Wilder's conservative values, and the stresses of collaboration that take place when strong-willed people work together in writing and publishing works.  Overall, this is a good book if one wants a better understanding of the importance of God and religion to not only the Little House on the Prairie series, but also to the establishment of towns in the West in general.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/08/13/book-review-the-heroines-bookshelf/

I loved reading this book. Little House was both a book and TV series I grew up on. I had forgotten it for a while but this book reminded me why I loved the series so much.

*thank you to Netgalley and WaterBrook & Multnomah for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*

3 stars.

I LOVED nothing more than getting up really early in the morning (quite alot earlier than I was ment to!) and sneak out to watch 'The Little House on the Prairie' on TV. It was New Zealand, it was freezing but I didnt care. The show was amazing, it was so worth it so as soon as I saw this book on NetGalley I had to request it. Reading through this brought up some wonderful memories. I expecually loved the quotes from Laura Ingalls Wilder. The show had such a old fashioned comfort feeling to it and I felt that again while reading these. The downside is that there were quite a few too many parts that seemed to drag. I think someone who is a huge huge fan of the show will really enjoy this but those who mearly just enjoyed it while watching it or reading the books may want to skim through this. Though it will vary person to person. It was good enough to read through and I am glad that I was given the opportunity to do so.

A longtime fan of all things Little House relate, this book was an insta-click. The author was certainly a fan and no doubt combed through many months and years of research to present this book to reading audiences. Pioneer families leaned heavily on their religious beliefs to help them through the challenges they faced and the Ingalls family was no different. The moving from place to place, the loss of an infant son, the terrible illness that left their oldest child blind no doubt were painful for Charles and Caroline Ingalls.

Stephen W.Hines pulls evidence from several of the books as well as LIW 's letters and other personal papers. However, I felt the book was unorganized and sometimes the main ideas became muddled. The chapter with all the recipes had me more than a tad confused. Was this meant as a mere filler because a certain amount of pages was required? Also Hines focuses much on the collaborative efforts between Laura and daughter Rose to bring these stories to the reading public, but I have read about that elsewhere and I felt it also muddied the waters of the focus of the text( although there is a vein of the religious beliefs of both women influencing the text).

In summary, intriguing premise, but it needed much stronger organization in the writing.

Anything with Laura Ingalls Wilder's name on it will sell. While it's been a few years since Hines published anything about Wilder, I guess he had to jump on the Laura wagon once again. A Prairie Girl's Faith is a fairly weak book. First, he makes two blatant errors that every run of the mill Wilder fan would know. Charles and Caroline Ingalls were married in Concord, WI, not Pepin, and the Wilders'son was born in 1889 not 1888.
Hines just cobbled together the same old story lines and sprinkled some religion amongst the text. He uses block quotes from Pioneer Girl and the Missouri Ruralist articles, There is only one chapter where he anaylyzes hymns. Honestly,, there is nothing original or illuminating about this book. He even resorts to copying recipes from an old De Smet cook book as a stretch when he discusses church socials. It's very tedious when people churn out the same stuff in an attempt to cash in on Wilder's name.

As a young Minnesota girl, it was part of school life to read the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. For me, this was definitely not a chore, but an absolute delight. The love for reading was kindled in me from these and similar type books.

This new book by Stephen W. Hines, looks at the insights of Laura's life and legacy. The well written book shares not only a bit about prairie life, both the hard, the wonderful and the real, but also some of the things that made Laura "tick", so to speak. It almost felt as though her life was studied and shared her innermost reasons for being who she was. Both the good and maybe not-so perfect Laura, was related and explained.

It was wonderful to read this book, having been such a childhood fan, and to see the social and personal feelings of Laura and how trials of our faith send you in directions you never knew would happen in your life. There are also several pages of pioneer recipes from Laura's associates.

I found the title of chapter 10 somewhat thought provoking. It was "What Laura Means to Us". Laura meant a lot to me as a child and her legacy will outlive that of most of ours. This book shares the history, the social and family networking of those days and I feel by reading this book I have come to understand them. And in some ways would love to relive them. The book depicts some of the cultural shifts which appeared over the passing of time. It's a good book to help us appreciate those who came before us and pioneered in this land and what our lives were built on. Highly recommend this book!

I received an ebook copy of this book from NetGalley. All thoughts are my own.

Are you a fan of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books? If so, you will enjoy this new title that examines Wilder and her varied writings in a unique way—through the prism of the faith that was such an integral part of she and her family’s lives. Author Stephen W. Hines—who is a recognized authority on the topic of Laura Ingalls Wilder and who has authored several other books about her—begins Chapter One as follows: “Virtually every fan of the Laura Ingalls Wilder’s children’s books comes to realize that her religious faith is woven into her family’s story of pioneering in the old West. Throughout the eight original titles there are, in the foreground, references to Scripture, hymns, and prayer—to a daily life that experienced the reality of God. We are no more than twenty-three pages into the first title, Little House in the Big Woods, before Pa is playing his fiddle from which poured such standards as “Rock of Ages,” “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand,” and “A Shelter in the Time Of Storm,” songs that were in the hymnals of my youth but are seldom found sixty years later.” Indeed, one of my favorite chapters of the book examines the hymns sung by the pioneers, their lyrics, and those who wrote them. Hines goes on to examine the faith that shines through the Little House series, but also Wilder’s other writings such as her newspaper columns. He examines Laura’s extended family’s faith, and her lifelong faith journey. I highly recommend this unique examination of a very unique woman who preserved what pioneering in the American West was like as well as the courage of those early settlers. Thank you WaterBrook and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book and for allowing me to review it.