The First Four Years - Hardcover

Laura Ingall Wilder

3.87

41,266 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0718819764 ISBN 13: 9780718819767

Publisher: Lutterworth Press, 1973

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Laura grew up in the real Western days, when the American frontier was being slowly pushed westward and the pioneer families were breaking in the untilled land and raising the first towns. She was fourteen when first she walked home from church with Almanzo Wilder; a year later, when she was teaching school, he came driving twelve miles across the prairie each Friday to take her home for the week-end; and when she was eighteen, they were married. "The First Four Years begins" with their first years together on a homestead and tree claim on the South Dakota prairie. Those were years of companionship and happiness, hard work and struggle, as Laura and Manly worked the land they hoped one day to town. The making of a home, the birth of their daughter Rose, brought them great joy; but they met with sadness too, and hardship, and disaster. Yet Manly still kept the incurable optimism of the farmer; and Laura, seeing his determination and love of the land, felt that optimism blend with the pioneer creed she had inherited: 'It is better farther on' - "Only instead of farther on in space, it was farther on in time, over the horizon of the years ahead instead of the far horizon of the west". An epilogue written by Laura's daughter tells how after struggles and griefs of the first years, their last pioneering journey brought them over that horizon to a lifelong and happy home.

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From the Back Cover:

America's Original Pioneer Girl

Meet Laura Ingalls, the girl who would grow up to write the Little House books.

Laura and Almanzo Wilder have just been married! Their life on a small prairie homestead begins with high hopes. But each year seems to bring unexpected disasters -- storms, sickness, fire, and unpaid debts. These first four years call for courage, strength, and a great deal of determination. Always, though, there is love, especially for the newest member of the family -- baby Rose.

The First Four Years is the ninth and final book in the Laura Years series.

About the Author:

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born in Wisconsin in 1867, and grew up in Dakota, where her pioneer father, Charles Ingalls, brought his family. She married Almanzo Wilder in 1887, and they eventually settled in Missouri, where half a century later, encouraged by her daughter Rose (herself a highly successful author), she began writing the stories of her childhood and girlhood which were to make her famous. Many years after her death, her books remain popular, and her home is still visited by many admirers who grew up with them.

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