Although generations of readers of the Little House books are familiar with Laura Ingalls Wilder's early life up through her first years of marriage to Almanzo Wilder, few know about her adult years. Going beyond previous studies, "Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder" focuses upon Wilder's years in Missouri from 1894 to 1957. Utilizing her unpublished autobiography, letters, newspaper stories, and other documentary evidence, John E. Miller fills the gaps in Wilder's autobiographical novels, and describes her sixty-three years of living in Mansfield, Missouri. As a result, the process of personal development that culminated in Wilder's writing of the novels that secured her reputation as one of America's most popular children's authors becomes evident....

Miller combines analyses of Wilder and Lane to explore their collaborative process and shows how their books reflect the authors distinctive views of place, time, and culture. He compares Wilder with Frederick Jackson Turner as a frontier mythmaker and examines Lane s unpublished history of Missouri in the context of Thomas Hart Benton s famous Jefferson City mural. Miller also looks at Wilder s Missouri Ruralist columns to assess her pre Little House values and writing skills, and he readdresses her literary treatment of Native Americans. He shows how Wilder s and Lane s conservative political views found expression in their work....