These Happy Golden Years

1943, 1971 Harper & Row edition
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Illustrated by Garth Williams
These Happy Golden Years
Original and purchase price unknown
Stained and possibly moldy hardcover
B


This book covers about three years, taking Laura from a 15-year-old who's beginning to teach school to a just-married 18-year-old.  Since The First Four Years was published posthumously, this will be the last we'll see of the Ingallses and Wilders for a long while.  As such, there's a bittersweetness, despite the title.  Laura and her sisters are growing up, as Mary reluctantly admits and Carrie proudly states. 

There are some dark moments, including Laura's stay with a very unhappily married couple, the wife threatening her husband with a knife one night!  Laura is boarding with them but bravely stays on so as to finish her teaching term.  Also, there's a tale of a cyclone that wreaks havoc for some of the distant neighbors.  Laura and her family come through the rough times, as before, but the rough times are fewer.  Indeed, there's a surprising amount of comparative prosperity, as the shanty expands to include even a parlor with an organ.  Thanks partly to Pa's farming going well and partly to Laura's own hard work, she's able to afford nicer clothes, and Mary even comes home from college a couple times.  In contrast to the snowflakes of Long Winter, there are drawings of wildflowers throughout.

Perhaps because earlier books covered shorter spans (Long Winter in particular of course), this book feels a bit rushed.  The courtship is handled well though, showing Laura's growing love for Almanzo in an understated way.  The scene with her scaring Nellie, who's horned in on Almanzo's buggy rides, by riling up the colts is funny and believable.  Laura herself handles the horses well, which is part of what he admires about her.  He agrees to leave "obey" out of the wedding ceremony, and, as she tells Mary, they just seem to suit each other.  I found Ida's wedding gift of lace very touching.

I would've liked to have seen more of the teaching though.  After the first school, where she wins over the students, there's less detail.  But, as she also tells Mary, time goes so much faster as they get older.  (In my own case, it's slowed down the older I get, but I know that's unusual.)

Farewell for now, Laura Ingalls Wilder.  You are still an admirable heroine seven or eight decades later.  I just wish your books were a little more worthy of you.