A Wilder Rose: A Novel (16 page)

“Oh, thank you, Rose,” she interrupted. “It always does my heart good to hear you say that you like my writing. And that story about Mr. Corse is your father’s favorite. But I want to read you the thank-you letter I got from your Aunt Grace.”

Aunt Grace was ill, and she and her husband, Nate Dow, were destitute. Back in February, she had written, begging for help. Mama Bess had sent her what she could afford at the time, and I had chipped in what I could. When my mother had finished reading the thank-you letter (adding that it was a sad day in America when folks couldn’t get by on their own), I tried again to bring the subject back to the book.

“As I said, Mama Bess, I’m enjoying
Farmer Boy
. But I really think there are a few adjustments that need to be made, especially in the beginning pages. That’s where Mr. Corse pulls out a blacksnake whip and lashes one of the boys until his clothes are cut to pieces and the blood is flying. Then he kicks him—literally kicks him—out the schoolhouse door. Do you really think this is something that children—”

“I’m sorry, but your father wants me,” she broke in cheerily. “Just be a dear girl and squeeze in my typing whenever you’re not busy with something else. There’s plenty of time. I don’t have to mail it to Harper until August.” And she hung up.

To my relief, Lowell Thomas sent an additional packet of manuscript material for the book I was working on, and I had a legitimate excuse for putting
Farmer Boy
aside. Bunting was sick again, too, so I alternated between taking care of the little dog and working on the book I was ghosting. I finally finished the manuscript in the middle of April and sent it off with the passionate hope that it would be the last job I would do for Lowell Thomas.

I was celebrating by pulling the winter debris out of the rose garden when my father drove up and dropped my mother off. She was carrying a book and almost dancing. “Rose!” she cried, hurrying toward me. “Rose, it’s here!
Little House
is here!”

And so it was. A hardbound book in a thin paper jacket printed with the title and my mother’s name—her
full
name, Laura Ingalls Wilder. The cover featured a drawing by Helen Sewell of a small log cabin with two little girls peeking out of the front door, two deer and a bear in the yard, and a squirrel on the roof.

“It’s charming!” I said. “Oh, Mama Bess, I’m so happy for you! Congratulations!”

“Thank you, Rose,” my mother said, and held the book out in front of her, gazing at it. “At last, it’s beginning to seem real.”

I put my arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go have a cup of tea, and you can read me a chapter. How about the story of Ma and Laura and the bear, in Chapter Six.”

“One of my favorites,” my mother said happily. She shook her head, tears coming into her blue eyes. “Oh, how I wish Ma could see that story—in a book.
My
book.”

It was a moment to celebrate, and perhaps a good omen. For the next day, I heard from George Bye that George Lorimer, the editor of the
Saturday Evening Post
, was still interested in “a piece from Mrs. Lane about pioneers.”

“My very dear Rose,” George wrote, “can’t you come up with
something
that will make our friend Lorimer lust for your work?”

I thought immediately of “Courage,” which I had started in October and then laid aside, heartsick at the Palmer bankruptcy and Troub’s leaving. I had picked it up again for a few days in January and worked on it enough to know that it had the potential to turn into something good. But I could see that it was a large project, so I had put it away in favor of the short stories that might produce a quicker return and the ghostwriting for Thomas, which had a deadline. And
Farmer Boy.
Now, I was excited about it, thinking of what I could do with it, how I could shape the story. I even found myself thinking at odd moments—while I was washing dishes or feeding the chickens—about ways to deepen the characters and make them more complex. I was anxious to get back to it, hoping that it might work for Lorimer and the
Post.

But Harper needed
Farmer Boy
at the end of August. So I went back to my mother’s manuscript, typing her handwritten pages, aiming to produce a chapter a day. It was frustrating work, since without her agreement, I couldn’t do the kind of serious cutting and editing and rewriting that was needed.

At one point, early in June, she dropped in for breakfast and I tried once again to show her some of the changes that I wanted to make.

She only smiled, tilted her chin, and said, very firmly, “Just type it the way I have it, dear. That will be quite good enough.”

I flinched. The tone of her voice was just as it had been all those years ago, when I was a girl. I would want to do something a new way, a different way, and she would say to me, reprovingly, “No, Rose. Just do as you are told, dear. That will be quite good enough.”

Finally, toward the middle of June, I was nearly finished typing my mother’s book
.
I had put in a full thirty days on a project I had little heart for. “Courage” was rising like pulsing yeast, and I had to get back to it.

The story was a simple one. Charles and Caroline, newly married, have homesteaded a claim in Dakota Territory and are living in a dugout, where their baby boy is born during the winter. The next summer, their wheat crop offers astonishing promise, but drought and a relentless swarm of grasshoppers devastate it. The Svensons, their only neighbors, abandon their claim and leave, defeated by their losses. Charles must leave too, walking back East to earn money and planning to return before winter sets in. But he breaks his leg in an on-the-job accident, and Caroline stays alone with the baby on the claim through the winter, braving not only the storms outside but also the inner storms of fear and uncertainty. When the weather clears, Charles returns and the couple realizes that their success depends on their strength and courage, on their determination to weather nature’s storms. I ended the book with Caroline’s brightly optimistic hope for her infant son, measured by the big white house and acres of wheat fields and fast horses he will own when he is grown up and is enjoying all the rewards that the land has to offer.

A simple pioneer story, yes. But it was also a story of our times, I thought. “Courage” was my reply to the pessimists who told us that the Depression had wrecked all our dreams. It was a testament to my belief that while political leaders might flounder and fail, ordinary men and women would simply move on, bravely, indomitably, redeeming every disaster by their individual struggles. And even more, it was a personal tribute to my faith in myself. It was the first time I had written something from the heart of me, something I truly believed in. Somewhere along the way I had realized, with a kind of stunned, blinking awareness, that at last I had become a writer, a real writer, with an important message to deliver. Courage. Whatever the storm, we must remain invincible.

The project had turned into a long, three-part serial, and I worked steadily at it all through July, in spite of the devastating heat, over a hundred in the sleeping porch where I wrote every day, in spite of problems with my teeth, in spite of interruptions by my mother and her friends. I was heartened by a note from George Bye who, sight unseen, said he thought the story would sell, then deeply disheartened by a letter from George Lorimer, saying that the
Post
didn’t have space for a serial because the issues were now less than normal size and they were trying to give their readers as great a variety as possible.

And I was truly terrified when I looked at my bank balance and realized that I had less than two months’ living expenses. I had to tell Jess and Mrs. Capper that I could no longer afford to pay their salaries. Jess could work for the rent, at least for a while, but Mrs. Capper left the next Sunday. It was a terrible day. We both wept.

Such storms, I thought, after she had gone and I was alone. Such storms all around me, within me. I clenched my fists and thought of Caroline and her baby boy, surviving the longest, hardest winter in a prairie dugout, completely alone, with no one to help, no one to depend on. I thought of Rexh at Cambridge, depending on me. Of Mama Bess and Papa counting on me, too.

Invincible,
I reminded myself.
I must remain invincible.
I went on writing.

The Sunday night before “Courage” was finished, I walked over to the Rock House for supper. I had already told my parents the basic outline of my story. That night, we sat outside on the porch and talked about the courage it took to defy the elements, to wrest a living from a hard and unforgiving land. My mother said it reminded her of a hymn that her family used to sing, “Let the Hurricane Roar.” She couldn’t remember all the words, but I was struck by the idea. Many Americans had sung that hymn since they were children. They would instinctively feel the powerful faith behind that simple phrase. They would understand what it meant—
all
that it meant, then and now.

I went home and retyped the first page of my story, heading it “Let the Hurricane Roar.” That week, I sent the typescript off to George Bye, feeling alternately hopeful and despairing. It had to sell. It
had
to—but would it?

Now that “Hurricane” was done, I went back to typing my mother’s manuscript of
Farmer Boy
. I had come to deeply resent the task, not because I had to do it, or even because it had been such an interruption. I resented it because I wasn’t allowed to do it
right—
to do the editorial revisions that would have turned a weak manuscript into something strong and good
.
By the time I handed the typescript to my mother, I could barely stand to look at it.

I took a few days to recover from the constant, hard pushing that produced both my serial and my mother’s typed manuscript. Then, desperate for cash, I started one story, gave up on it, and started another one—“Country Jake”—with a little more promise. Meanwhile, “Hurricane” was making the rounds of the magazines. I got a telegram from George Bye raving about it, then a plaintive note saying that
Woman’s Home Companion
wanted it badly but felt it was too long; they just didn’t have the pages for it. The
Post
had already warned of that, and I was seized with a cold dread. It was possible, even entirely likely, that every magazine in New York would want the story, and still it would end up with no place to go.
Invincible,
I reminded myself again.
Invincible.
I went back to “Country Jake.”

And then, on the Tuesday after Labor Day, I got a wire from George Bye. George Lorimer had decided that the
Saturday Evening Post
had to have it, after all. They were paying three thousand dollars and would publish it in two installments. George had tried to get them to go higher (it was easily worth ten thousand dollars, he said), but that was the best they could do. He was sure, however, that there would be a book publication as well; he had already talked to Maxwell Aley at Longmans, Green. Aley wanted the book for his spring list, both in the United States and in England. “Hugs, kisses, and congratulations,” George telegraphed.

I was so excited that I didn’t get to sleep until three in the morning, and the sheer delight of it stayed with me for days. I was glad to have the money, yes—it affirmed the value of the story. But I had written it because it was
true.
I had written it because I believed that ordinary people would always go on, as my parents and their parents had gone on, with courage and fortitude.

It was the first thing I had written that I truly believed in. And now, having written it, I could believe in myself.

Two weeks later, Harper rejected
Farmer Boy.
I made cinnamon toast and tea, and Mama Bess and I sat at my kitchen table over the letter from her new editor, Ida Louise Raymond.

It was a hard, hard blow, and my mother kept saying, “But I thought it was such a good book, Rose! I wrote down the stories just as Manly told them—and you know how hard it is to get him to talk.”

I felt sorry for her, of course, and I tried to comfort her. Rejection is never easy. But I also felt that this particular rejection was the best thing that could have happened, and I was grateful for Miss Raymond’s detailed and decidedly firm revision letter, with instructions for reshaping the manuscript to make it acceptable. She had a sharp critical eye, and she made no secret of her disappointment, sweetening her critique with only the mildest praise.

My mother had already heard some of the same criticisms from me, but she had danced away from them like a skittish colt refusing the halter. Now, she had to be still and pay attention because the revision instructions came from her editor, and her editor held the purse strings. If she didn’t make the changes Miss Raymond laid out, she would lose not only
Farmer Boy
but also the third book in her Harper’s contract. Without continuing support from the new books, the sales of
Little House in the Big Woods
would dwindle away to nothing. She had already begun to hope that, in the long term, these books would free her from her financial dependence on me. It was a hope I shared, with all my heart.