West From Home, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

In 1915 Laura Ingalls Wilder travelled westward to visit her daughter Rose Wilder Lane in San Franciso and to enjoy the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The letters she wrote home to her husband, Almanzo, are collected here as West From Home. They show the author of the Little House novels as a sensitive observer during her travels, and a loving wife.

Laura Ingalls Wilder found fame later in life as the author of the autobiographical Little House series of novels. These works of thinly veiled fiction told of Laura’s upbringing on America’s rough and untamed frontier. The Ingalls lived close to the land and by the seasons, the tragedies and joys of which Laura Ingalls Wilder described in her simple and engaging style. In 1931, Laura had finished a manuscript which would late be called, Little House in the Big Woods. It was her first attempt at novel writing. Eight more Little House novels would follow.

It was actually Laura’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, who was famous first as a writer, working as a journalist and novelist. By 1915, Laura could see the possibilities of earning some income, and with a little professional help from her daughter, was working out some pieces for the Missouri Ruralist. In that same year Laura travelled west to San Francisco to stay with her daughter and visit the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, a world fair full of attractions assembled from all over the world.

Laura’s husband, Almanzo, could not make the trip, due to the family’s farm, so she kept him up to date with her adventures by constant letter writing. These letters have been collected into the small volume, West From Home, which is padded out with a middle section of photos showing the San Francisco sites that Laura visited, plus various highlights from the International Exposition.

West From Home will perhaps be of more interest to Ingalls Wilder fans than anyone else. The letters show an affectionate wife, observant traveller and woman highly sensitive to her natural surroundings. Laura’s marvelling at the beautiful colours of San Francisco, the refreshing sea breezes and indigenous flora, are all aesthetic qualities that would appear in her later novels.

Laura’s marriage to Almanzo was also an obviously close and gentle one. The letters show her always concerned about her husband’s physical and emotional well being. You get the impression of a couple that lived very closely and depended on each other entirely. It’s like Laura and Almanzo breathe with the same set of lungs. In on letter she writes that she’s always losing half the fun of her holiday, because Almanzo is not there to enjoy it with her.

Laura Ingalls Wilder was no earth shattering letter writer, so the reader shouldn’t expect any grand belle lettres. Besides, this correspondence was never meant for publication, and Laura wrote here more to console her husband. Nonetheless, for Little House fans, these San Francisco letters make for an intriguing autobiographical fragment.

West From Home, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Published by Harper Trophy (1974). ISBN: 978-0-06-440081-7