Death on the Prairie – A Retrospective

I often say that I look for untold stories or little-known events when seeking inspiration for a new book.  With the 6th Chloe Ellefson mystery, Death on the Prairie, I took the opposite approach.

Laura Ingalls Wilder is one of America’s best known and beloved authors. Many adults came to love reading in part by devouring the Little House Books as children. Interest in Wilder’s life is so strong that the LIW Legacy and Research Association holds a conference every two years, where Wilder fans can catch up on the latest scholarship.

The publication of Prairie Girl:  The Annotated Biography, edited by Pamela Smith Hill, created a demand that took months to fulfill. More recently Prairie Fires:  The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser, billed as the first comprehensive historical biography of the author, won a Pulitzer Prize.

Clearly, I wasn’t going to be turning new ground. I wanted to do the book anyway.  Laura’s stories had a huge impact on me as a child, and it was no stretch to imagine they had a similar impact on Chloe as well:

Only another true Little House-lover could understand what the books had meant to her as a child.  It wasn’t just that she and Kari had “played Laura and Mary.” Or that Chloe had turned a back yard bower into a private playhouse she called Laura Land—soft grass and green leaves magically transformed into a log cabin. Laura’s adventures had captivated. Laura’s struggles had inspired. Laura had been a faithful friend when no one else understood. Laura’s stories had sparked Chloe’s interest in history, her hobbies, her career and professional passions.

This book led me here, Chloe thought.

Doing a LIW book had been in the plans for quite a while by the time I got started.  I had to wait until the time was right for Chloe and Roelke. If you’re familiar with the Little House books, you know that the idea of home is one of the main themes running through the series. What happens when one parent wants to settle and one doesn’t? How do people know if this is the place they’re meant to be? What happens when best efforts are met with tragedies and hardships?

In each Chloe book I try to let the 1980s plot reflect the themes of the historical thread. That meant waiting until Chloe and Roelke were wrestling with some of those same questions.  Specifically, Roelke is trying to decide if buying his old family farm is the right thing to do, and Chloe is trying to decide if she’s ready to move in with him.

It was an easy decision to have Chloe travel with her sister Kari on the Laura Land tour. My older sister and I visited all of the LIW historic sites together, and had a blast.

As I thought about the artifact needed to set the chain of events in motion, it didn’t take long to decide to focus on quilts.  Quilts are mentioned many times in the books. And by good fortune, I’d taken a couple of classes from quilter extraordinaire Linda Halpin, a quilt historian with a special interest in Laura’s quilts. In addition to kicking around some plot ideas with me, she made a gorgeous quilt featuring each of the patterns mentioned in the books.

Linda (on the right) and I took the quilt she made for me to the Ingalls family’s dugout site on Plum Creek (small sign in the background marks actual spot). Just because.

I decided it would not be appropriate to include a strand of historical fiction in this book.   Instead, I selected a quote from one of the books to open each chapter.  These epigraphs brought Laura’s prose front and center…and also served as clues to the mystery.

SPOILER ALERT:  Plot points discussed below!

I didn’t plan Kari’s role in the plot from the beginning, but part way through that idea began to take shape. I was exploring the complexities of finding a home, so why not let Kari play a role in revealing a new aspect of that?

Dealing with the issue also let me get Roelke into a philosophically challenging situation. I wasn’t sure how that would play, but I didn’t get any complaints.

The replica cabin at Pepin, Wisconsin.

For me, the hardest part of spending a year immersed in all things LIW was confronting the reality of Laura’s life. I, like probably most young readers, believed Laura when she said of her books that everything in them was true. Nope. Fictionationalizing the Little House books meant more than adding dialogue. At times it meant changing facts.

The books were also very heavily edited by Laura’s daughter Rose. That wasn’t the image I’d cherished all those years. I included a few small examples. However, I chose not to mention the couple of things that surprised and disappointed me the most.

Instead I let Chloe experience the same sense of surprise and disappointment I felt. The subject comes up at one of the first stops:

Marianne leaned back in her chair, eyeing Chloe with speculation. “Are you a book person, a TV person, or a truther?”

“I…um…” Chloe floundered.

“Some people don’t want to hear about anything Laura didn’t include in the books,” Marianne explained. “Some people love the Little House TV series, and don’t want to hear about anything that Michael Landon didn’t include in a show.”

“Ah.”  Chloe hadn’t watched the series herself, but she was familiar with it.

“And a few people want to know what Laura’s life was truly like,” Marianne continued.

“That would be me,” Chloe said.  “I’m a truther.” She was a curator, after all. A history professional.

Chloe isn’t able to maintain that lofty stance throughout the story. By the end, she’s decided that further LIW studies are not for her:  The scholarship was important, but Chloe wanted to keep Laura as the trusted childhood friend she remembered.

Me too.

That said, one of the best part of writing Death on the Prairie was the conversations with readers. So many people have their own memories of the books or the television series. It was a rare opportunity to share something that mean a lot to many of us. Thanks for joining the conversation!