Honestly, my understanding of that epoch in history was informed by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

It isn't perfect or to take totally factual. But mom started reading LHotP when I was 4 or 5 and it was a revelation to me. It made me create..imaginations. I still wonder about maple syrup candy ( half my family were immigrant farmers, and likely the eras and geography overlapped) and I still giggle when mom puts an orange in the stocking at xmas.

The last installment, The First Four Years ? was my first taste of tough romance in a sense, I think. I think I read that one on my own later. Things get fucked up, go wrong and you survive and you love. At least, that was my reading at the time.

God, I'm protective of that series. I've been to Walnut (whatever it was called) and the dugout and and and. Been there. Parts of my family lived in it.

Oh goodness: the buffalo coat, peppermint and oranges, hairstyles in Little House the Big Woods, (wings over Caroline's ears!) maple syrup; candy, pork...whatever the that boiling was. Blacking the stove, the teacher tests and expectations of women, blizzards, housing, the diseases, the biases regarding Indians, the blackface, the dog, the sleeping arrangements ( I only wonder now how Ma & Pa had the kids that they did!)

To the extent there was fictionaliztion at all, it still told a lot.

Laura and Mary restuffing the mattresses with fresh straw! Blowing up the pig's bladder as a balloon! Milking the cow (Daisy, I think?) in the spring. Laura on her own at her first job sewing. Laura teaching on her own. Laura rocking the desk until she was sent home from school.

I'm amazed how much I remember, to tell you the truth.

Oh, the maple syrup, and the candy they made by drizzling the syrup on a frying pan filled with snow. And the awfulness of Sundays, and tiny Laura gripping the sides of her chair in a fury at the misery of that Day of Rest. And Pease Porridge Hot, and the schoolroom where Laura first taught (she was only 13 -- unimaginable now).

eta: And the teacher who thought to ingratiate him(her?)self with Laura by asking her to memorize the shortest verse in the Bible because she was herself so small, and Laura's polite assent but silent scorn.

I've been to Walnut (whatever it was called) and the dugout and and and

The dugout is still there? Oh. Oh. Oh.

Yup, Amy. The whole Nelly Olsen rivalry! Lemonade at the..whatever it was. Sledding!

The one I remember most is The Long Winter because I really felt like understood how looong winter could be. and I was reading it in the middle of summer.

eta: I get LOTS of boys asking for her books at the library- eagerly, not just because they have to read them

JZ, I don't know. I know we went to a dugout house and knowing my mom, if it was the Ingalls, we went there. I was probably 9.

Laura getting a "fringe" cut before the social!

It was Walnut Grove.

Damn, I have to dig the books out NOW.

Damn, I have to go buy the books now. My parents have them, if they haven't gifted them off already (they do a lot of that, and I approve.)

Maybe I should try them again. I got the first four or five as a boxed set when I was, oh, nine-ish, and pretty well disliked them. I think I read 1.5 of them, tried again later, and gave them away.