The Ingalls Family, the Railroads, and the Hard Winter of 1880-81
by Cindy Wilson
Being a devotee of all things Little House related, I found parts of this book extremely interesting. But not nearly as many parts as I hoped. It was a whole lot railroad history and facts about how the railroad companies tried to deal with the snow. And that part was pretty interesting…but I’d had enough after five or so pages of it.
Then she treated the winter month by month, with a section for each describing how the Ingalls family got along, then how the various settlements in and around De Smet fared. For each settlement she described newspaper publishing, fuel, food, railroad, human entertainment, and a vague subject she called “boosterism”. This latter described how the various entities (newspaper writers, politicians, railroad companies, ets) promoted life in the Dakota territories despite the little inconvenience of snow.
The book was well written and very much well researched, and it had lots of interesting stuff in it, but I found it a little bit overkill for me. Another history buff might say it was just right, though, so I won’t try to speak for everyone. Just my opinion—a great book to check out of the library but I’m glad not to need to own a copy.
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