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A review by emiged
The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder
4.0
Reading through this one as an adult, it was much more frightening than I remember when I read it as a child. The specter of starvation was never very far off that spring when the trains stopped coming and the wheat was running low. Even Pa eventually reacted viscerally to the blizzard as if it were a living thing, maliciously howling and pinning them down in their little shanty in town. I was impressed again and again with both Pa and Ma's ingenuity and ability to scrounge together a solution to their problems with so few resources.
My older two boys both liked the story of the uppity Eastern train executive who thought he knew better than all those Western train workers and was convinced he could force his way through the snow banks if he just backed up far enough and got going fast enough. My boys laughed and laughed when he got trapped in the tunnel of ice of his own making.
They were also excited to see how Almanzo and Royal Wilder's lives intersected with the Ingalls family, having wondered what happened to them after the end of Farmer Boy.
And now every time my boys complain about what's for dinner, I can remind them that the Ingalls family had nothing to eat but coarse brown bread for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for months on end, especially once the potatoes ran out, so they'd better sit down and appreciate their tacos, dang it.
My older two boys both liked the story of the uppity Eastern train executive who thought he knew better than all those Western train workers and was convinced he could force his way through the snow banks if he just backed up far enough and got going fast enough. My boys laughed and laughed when he got trapped in the tunnel of ice of his own making.
They were also excited to see how Almanzo and Royal Wilder's lives intersected with the Ingalls family, having wondered what happened to them after the end of Farmer Boy.
And now every time my boys complain about what's for dinner, I can remind them that the Ingalls family had nothing to eat but coarse brown bread for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for months on end, especially once the potatoes ran out, so they'd better sit down and appreciate their tacos, dang it.