Pioneer Girl (21 page)

Or maybe she, an independent woman who would die in her sleep the night before a planned trip around the world, did return to that little gray house, only instead of regretting, she simply watched, gauging a family she did not know and remembering the one she had—all long gone now. She was a sole survivor. And yet maybe she was not.

So who gets to say the secrets? Who gets to keep the stolen goods? I will load up my car with the pin, the poem, the photograph of a man who might be my grandfather, the copy of
Free Land
marked by Rose's hand. Like millions before me, I will try a new town, no doubt moving again in a year or two, on the lookout for work and for the next better place to be.

I will gather my belongings. I will worry about what I've forgotten. I will check my maps, my phone, check for my sunglasses and water. I will never feel ready for anything. I will start driving because I have to, because it's eleven hours to Chicago and fifteen hours after that, an indirect route through the Midwest that is my family's home, toward the prairies, and the hoped-for landscape that always lies just beyond to the west.

Though this novel draws on some real-life events and characters, it is firmly rooted in fiction and takes liberties with historical facts. It grew out of that great old question “What if?” and out of wondering how two seemingly opposite cultures might have so much in common. I have read, admired, and fretted over the
Little House
books since I was eight years old; I owe part of my love of reading (and reading about food) to Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane.

I am so grateful to Liz Van Hoose and Nicole Aragi for their incredible guidance and support. Many thanks also to Ramona Demme, Duvall Osteen, Christie Hauser, Carolyn Coleburn, Rebecca Lang, Barbara Campo, Dave Cole, Amanda Brower, Gina Anderson, Tsuyako Uehara, and everyone at Viking Penguin.

I also thank Donald Platt, John Duvall, Liz Han, Nush Powell, Derek Pacheco, Kera Lovell, Purdue University, the University of San Francisco, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home and Museum and the Laura Ingalls Wilder–Rose Wilder Lane Museum in Mansfield, Missouri, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society in De Smet, South Dakota, the Rose Wilder Lane Papers at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa, and everyone who's ever indulged me in conversations about the
Little House
books.

As part of my research for this novel I read and appreciated Rose Wilder Lane's
Diverging Roads
,
Free Land
, and
Let the Hurricane Roar
, among other works, William Holtz's
The Ghost in the Little House
, John E. Miller's
Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder
, William Anderson's
Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography
, and Anita Clair Fellman's
Little House, Long Shadow:
Laura Ingalls Wilder's Impact on American Culture
.

And as always I thank Po, wise reader and constant support, who understands my
Little House
obsession and has been to De Smet to prove it.