Our Recommended Reading for Children & Young Adults and Recommended Reading for Adults articles have been popular resources for readers interested in Laura Ingalls Wilder and Little House on the Prairie. Here is a brief overview of West From Home: Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, San Francisco, 1915.

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Author: Laura Ingalls Wilder
Editor: Roger Lea MacBride
Publisher: HarperCollins (October 20, 1976)

Synopsis:
“It is like a fairyland.” So Laura Ingalls Wilder described her 1915 voyage to San Francisco to visit her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. Laura’s husband, Almanzo, was unable to leave their Missouri farm and it is her faithful letters home, vividly describing every detail of her journey, that have been gathered here. Includes 24 pages of exciting photographs and completely redesigned jacket art.

About the Author: Laura Ingalls Wilder
Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in 1867 in the log cabin described in Little House in the Big Woods. She and her family traveled by covered wagon across the Midwest. Later, Laura and her husband, Almanzo Wilder, made their own covered-wagon trip with their daughter, Rose, to Mansfield, Missouri. There, believing in the importance of knowing where you began in order to appreciate how far you’ve come, Laura wrote about her childhood growing up on the American frontier. For millions of readers Laura lives on forever as the little pioneer girl in the beloved Little House books.

About the Editor: Roger Lea MacBride
Roger Lea MacBride, the “adopted grandson” and heir of Rose Wilder Lane, was born in New Rochelle, New York, in 1929.  His father, Burt MacBride, was an editor for Reader’s Digest when Rose wrote for the magazine, and he introduced his teenage son to the author.  Roger loved to listen to Rose’s stories and political theories, and the two became close.  MacBride received the rights to the Little House books upon Rose’s death in 1968.  In 1971, he had Laura’s manuscript of The First Four Years published, and in 1974, he edited her letters to Almanzo in 1915 and published them as West From Home: Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, San Francisco 1915.  In Rose Wilder Lane: Her Story he used her letters and diaries as source material to create a semi-autobiographical account of her life.  A continuation of the Little House series with Rose as the main character has been published under the name of Roger Lea MacBride.  MacBride provided some input into this fictionalized series, which includes: Little House on Rocky Ridge, Little Farm in the Ozarks, In the Land of the Big Red Apple, On the Other Side of the Hill, Little Town in the Ozarks, New Dawn on Rocky Ridge, On the Banks of the Bayou, and Bachelor Girl.  He was also an active participant in the creation of the television shows “Little House on the Prairie” and “Young Pioneers.”

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