Laura Ingalls Wilder in Mansfield, Missouri
Libertarians on the Prairie, Chris’s biography of the secret coauthors of the Little House on the Prairie books, continues to get out there. She will give a keynote speech on Thursday, July 13 at a gathering of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane researchers, the Laurapalooza, in Springfield, Missouri. Her speech is called, “The Family Business.” It shows how the two women brought their best skills to the eight-book project and how they molded the pioneer story into a heroic tale of independence and courage.
On Friday, August 4 at 7 p.m., Chris will read from Libertarians on the Prairie and answer questions and sign books at Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City.
On Saturday, August 5, Chris will give a talk at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa (home of the Lane-Wilder papers) on how Laura and Rose’s frustrations with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs strengthened their admiration of the family’s difficult frontier experiences– and led to a particular approach in their writing of the Little House books. She will appear with historian David Davenport, author of a book about Herbert Hoover, Rugged Individualism.
