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ricksilva 's review for:
The Long Winter
by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Charles Ingalls, harvesting hay in the late summer of his family's second year in newly-founded town of De Smet, South Dakota, begins to notice troubling signs of a difficult winter ahead. When the signs become too much to ignore, he moves his family into the shop building he owns in town to try to weather the relentless succession of blizzards that soon cut off the railroad and leave the town on the brink of starvation.
The opening few chapters of this installment, the sixth in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series could easily function as the beginning of a straight-up horror novel, and indeed, the events in the story come close to being horrific on several occasions. The dangers of the weather and of starvation loom large as the winter drags on, and the tensions between the townsfolk threaten to reach the boiling point several times.
This story breaks away from the point of view of second-oldest-daughter Laura in several places to tell the story of Almanzo Wilder, who was introduced back in the second volume in the series. Almanzo, now nineteen, and a landowner after lying about his age on a land claim, is staying in town with his older brother, and undertakes a journey to obtain desperately-needed supplies during the worst of the cold weather.
The author provides her usual attention to detail, and does a nice job of building subtle tension as the stress of barely scraping by wears on all of the characters.
The opening few chapters of this installment, the sixth in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series could easily function as the beginning of a straight-up horror novel, and indeed, the events in the story come close to being horrific on several occasions. The dangers of the weather and of starvation loom large as the winter drags on, and the tensions between the townsfolk threaten to reach the boiling point several times.
This story breaks away from the point of view of second-oldest-daughter Laura in several places to tell the story of Almanzo Wilder, who was introduced back in the second volume in the series. Almanzo, now nineteen, and a landowner after lying about his age on a land claim, is staying in town with his older brother, and undertakes a journey to obtain desperately-needed supplies during the worst of the cold weather.
The author provides her usual attention to detail, and does a nice job of building subtle tension as the stress of barely scraping by wears on all of the characters.