Lifescapes

A WILDER ROSE Named to Kirkus' Best Indie Fiction of 2013

   I'm delighted to tell you that A Wilder Rose has been named by the prestigious review publication, Kirkus Reviews, to its 2013 Best of Indie Fiction list.

Writing this book--a tribute to the unacknowledged coauthor of the beloved Little House books--and publishing it has been a remarkable journey. My grateful thanks to all of you who have made that journey with me, and whose support means more to me than I can say. It truly takes a village...

A Wilder Rose Goodreads Q&A

 I'm over at Goodreads this week, answering readers' questions about A Wilder Rose. Drop in if you have a few moments. Some really interesting questions!

If you're curious about Rose's bookplate (left), here's the story. It was created for her in 1917 by Berta Hoerner, with whom she shared a studio on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco, at 1413 Montgomery Street. Berta met Laura there when she visited SF in 1915. Rose and Berta also shared a coldwater walkup in Greenwich Village (circa 1918-1919).

Berta married Elmer Hader and the couple went on to become a well-known children's author-illustrator team. It was Berta who introduced Rose to Marion Fiery, who very much liked Rose's rewrite of part of Laura's "Pioneer Girl" manuscript. Marion acquired the project for Knopf. Expanded, it eventually went to Harper and was published as Little House in the Big Woods. You can read the full story in A Wilder Rose.

Reading note: She thought to herself, "This is now." She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.--Little House in the Big Woods

Guest Post & Giveaway

I'm over at Reading, Writing, Working, Playing, doing an extensive interview with Jane Greensmith. About the book, Jane writes this:

"A Wilder Rose was a fascinating look at not only the process involved in bringing a work to publication, but also provided an interesting perspective on the time in which the books were written. I really enjoyed getting to know Rose better—she was definitely a remarkable woman. A skilled writer, a traveler, an adventurer, she also is admirable in that she strove to do her duty regardless of how much she wanted to shirk it. She felt a very honest love but a deep frustration with her complex and complicated mother. She took her work seriously, and in this I found her a kindred spirit."  

You'll find more from Jane--and lots from me!--at Reading, Writing, Working, Playing, where your comment will earn you a chance in the book giveaway. Oh, and you can earn extra chances by tweeting the interview. 

On Titles, Subtitles, and Lessons Learned

When I'm writing a book, I start with a title--not always the title that ends up on the cover, but a title, nevertheless. For me, it's a kind of Rorschach, an idea-seed that grows into the book. Sometimes the title turns into plot, as it did in Widow's Tears and Cat's Claw. Sometimes it's all about setting, as in the Cottage Tale series: The Tale of Hill Top Farm, The Tale of Castle Cottage. Sometimes it's metaphoric--Blood Root, Bleeding Hearts--or refers to a time period: An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days.

When I began working on the Rose Wilder Lane project, my first title was Laura's Rose--a title that grew out of personal experience. In my mother's family, children were often referred to by their mother's name, partly because there were always a gazillion cousins by the same name. I was Lucille's Susan. My brother was Lucille's John. Hence Laura's Rose, which emphasized the strong bond between mother and daughter demonstrated by Rose's decade-long work on her mother's books.

But that title, I found out, was already in use. Back in 1986, Bill Anderson wrote a booklet called "Laura's Rose," long out of print. Titles can't be copyrighted, but when I asked him about it, Bill (who has done a great deal of good work on the Wilder materials) told me that he might like to reuse the title, so I dropped it.

A Wilder Rose came to me then, and I liked it even better: Rose was named for the wild rose of the Dakota prairies. Until she married, she was Rose Wilder. And one of her editors, commenting on an intemperate letter Rose had written, scrawled "Our wild Rose, at her wildest." A Wilder Rose seemed to me to describe a woman who was wild enough, in all ways, to challenge the fences her culture built around her: to become a global traveler in an era when most women stayed home; to live abroad; to become a best-selling author and a voice for a political movement.

And then I thought of a subtitle: Rose Wilder Lane, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Their Little Houses. Perfect, I thought. The novel is full of little houses: Rose's Albanian house, Laura's house at Rocky Ridge, Rose's Rock House (built for her parents in 1928), Rose's Danbury house. And about her house-building addiction, Rose once wrote to her friend, Dorothy Thompson, “Without houses, who knows? I might have been a writer.” Excellent choice, I told myself happily.

Not. The book was already in galleys (and the galleys were in the hands of reviewers) when I was cautioned that HarperCollins, the publisher of the Little House (TM) books might interpret my "Little Houses" (plural, referring to actual houses) as an infringement of their trademark on the Little House (TM) series.

Uh-oh. I checked with a lawyer who deals with such matters, and yes, indeed. The lawyer said this: "Trademark infringement applies not only to the use of the exact trademark but also to a use that is close enough to cause a regular consumer to be confused between the two." That seemed pretty definitive to me. And I definitely would not like to get into a wrestling match with a Big Publisher over two little words.

Long story short, I scrubbed the subtitle (as you can see on the revised book cover above) and spent a couple of days last week changing it in as many places as I could reach--in the file copies of the book/cover, on the Internet, in purchased advertising. Lots of extra work, but valuable lesson learned.

Oh, by the way: we're doing a quick giveaway of A Wilder Rose signed ARCs over at Goodreads. Go here to enter. Ends 8/7. If you miss this one, there'll be another. And another.

Reading note: "I did what I knew how to do. When I knew better, I did better." --Maya Angelou

  

Writing A Woman's Life Part 1

 I'm guest-posting over at the Story Circle blog, HerStories, this week. The topic:
How I came to write about Rose Wilder Lane and the Little House books. The story goes back to my childhood love affair with all eight of the books and my surprise when I read the ninth. For the details, read the post.

Texas Prairie Parsley & A New Book

The Texas Prairie parsley (Polytaenia texana) put on a big show along our creek this spring, in the Back of Beyond, and hosted a gang of swallowtail caterpillars, sometimes called by the inglorious name, parsleyworms.To show how much they love this plant, the caterpillars have literally denuded most of them. They don't seem to eat the blooms, though, so most plants are setting seed, ensuring the swallowtails a good food source for next year's caterpillars.

Prairie parsley is often called "wild dill," but it's not a good idea to substitute it for garden dill in food. It's a member of the carrot family and it has several poisonous look-alike relatives. The toxins are part of the caterpillar's survival scheme, however: the toxins make the parsleyworms taste bad, so birds avoid them. For other native plants that host swallowtails (and some lovely butterfly photos!), check out Carole Sevilla Brown's excellent post.

Book Report. I was delighted this week to get the proof copy of A Wilder Rose, which will be out in  October. I've received a great many proof copies in my nearly 30 years as an author, but this pleases me more than most because it's coming out under my own imprint, Persevero Press. The process has given me an inside look into the book business that I would never have had if I'd played it safe and gone with a traditional publisher. The review copies will be here next week and I'll be mailing them out. Review copies will also be available digitally and on NetGalley. 

This book is different, too, because it helped me revisit my past life as a research scholar. In the process, it led to an interesting and thought-provoking correspondence with a number of other scholars who have studied and written about Rose and her mother: William Holtz, whose biography of Rose, Ghost in the Little House, was an enormously helpful resource; William Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography; John E. Miller, who has written three books about Laura, including Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane; and Anita Fellman, Little House, Long Shadow. I've included many references to their work in the Reader's Companion that will be available as a free download from the book's website, so you can see where and how their writings have shaped influenced my fiction.

And this book is really different because of the work that's gone into it. I began the research in 1990 or so. I simply cannot count the number of hours, days, weeks I've put into it over the past 23 years. I'll have to write a post on that, when I get a little time.

Reading note:  “Research" is a wonderful word for writers. It serves as excuse for everything.--Rayne Hall. 

In Bloom This Week: Zepherine Druhin

My favorite antique rose, Zepherine Druhin, goes back to 1868. Like other Bourbons, it is delightfully fragrant, and this one blooms and blooms, even in the shade. It's one of the few roses that have survived our brutal long-term drought. We've had some relief here this week, with nearly 3" of rain, which brings us up to our average rainfall for the year so far. But the running average is still below normal, and the rain didn't fall in the watershed above the lakes (Travis and Buchanan), so it didn't help Austin's water supply.

I know: same song, second verse, and I'm sure I sound repetitive. But because we live in the country and pay close attention to the land, we're deeply aware of the impacts of the drought. We inhabit this place in ways that many people don't inhabit the places where they live. This morning, we tallied up the trees we've lost to the drought in the past four years: recalling each of them individually, at least three dozen in all, and all 10-30' tall. It's an enormous sadness, like losing three dozen friends. And since a 20' dead cedar is a huge potential fire bomb, each one has to come out, which means an enormous amount of work for Bill.

Book report. I'm at work on the 2014 Darling Dahlias mystery, the DDs and the Silver Dollar Bush. When I was a child, that's what I called Lunaria. It's also called the "money plant." The time setting for the book is March-April 1933, when the banks were closed and towns and cities had to resort to printing their own "money." It's a fascinating time and the research is absorbing. And I'm glad to get back to the Dahlias' characters and find out what is going on with their lives.

I'm also working on getting A Wilder Rose out into the world. As you probably know, I'm publishing this book myself, under my own imprint, Persevero Press. (Earlier, I wrote about my reasons for taking the indie route, rather than publishing it traditionally.) Kerry at Levine Greenberg is helping handle the printing end of things. Last week, I saw the page proofs for the book; this week, I'll have a bound proof copy. By mid-June, I should have review copies to send out. I'll be sending digital galleys, too, and the book will be available through NetGalley.

I'm also working with Jeanette Larson, a library consultant who has some good ideas for getting the word out to librarians. If you're a librarian or a library patron, please tell your library about the book. They can get the latest information about it (and so can you) by adding your name to the mailing list at the bottom of this page.

Garden report. I picked the last of the English peas this morning and will dig a few new potatoes for supper. The beans (Kentucky Wonder and MacCaslan) are flourishing, the cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen, and we still have plenty of chard and kale, which we're sharing with the chickens. They recycle our greens into beautiful large, orange-yolk eggs. Yum!

Reading note. To inhabit a place means literally to have made it a habit, to have made it the custom and ordinary practice of our lives, to have learned how to wear a place like a familiar garment, like the garments of sanctity that nuns once wore. The word habit, in its now-dim original form, meant "to own." We own places not because we possess the deeds to them, but because they have entered the continuum of our lives.--Paul Gruchow, Boundary Waters

Spring gardening in the Texas Hill Country

Lest you think that I spend all my time writing, here's a glimpse into another part of my life--the garden.

The potatoes look terrific this year, there in the left foreground. I planted them in January, fended off a couple of hard freezes in March, and look at them now! But bushy green tops are only part of the story. I can only hope they're doing their job at producing tubers--we'll know next month, when we dig them. Three kinds here: Yukon Gold, Caribe, and one of the reds, can't remember which.

Behind the potatoes on the left, the perennial onions. They're topsets and blooming now--I'll have to deadhead them or I'll have way more onions than I want. I use the white part in cooking all year and in the spring, when the green tops are tender, I use them like green onions. By fall, I'll be down to just a few clumps, which I'll separate and grow on for next year.

Beyond the onions, kale, chard, and spinach, with garlic at the end of the bed. We eat the tender new leaves, and the girls (my flock of six layers) get a half-bucket of older leaves every day. I love having chickens to eat the garden produce we can't. And their poop goes into the compost, which comes back into the garden. What goes around comes around, in the loveliest possible way.

Beyond the greens bed, a bed of Roma tomatoes and past that, a new bed of Kentucky Wonders and McCaslan beans, both pole-growers. I planted them last Sunday and the McCaslans, eager to see what it's all about, are already up and growing.

On the right, at the back, a trellis of pole peas. I prefer pole beans and peas--easier picking! Beside that bed, two more beds of tomatoes: Better Boys and Porters (the famous TX heritage tomato, a hot-weather survivor). I'll plant the weedy bed, right front, to zucchini and yellow crookneck squash later today.

But I've also been doing writing-related chores. A Wilder Rose--my upcoming self-published novel--now has its own webpage. It has its own Facebook page, too. And its own Pinterest board. I've been making a list of regular book bloggers who might be interested in reviewing the book. If you have a book blog to which you post regularly and think A Wilder Rose might fit your site, email me at susan at susanalbert dot com with a link to your blog.

Happy, busy days here in the Texas Hill Country (although we're still and always wishing for more rain). Hope they're happy and busy at your place, too--and that you have just the right amount of rain on your garden!

Reading note, from Rose Wilder Lane's 1919 novel, Diverging Roads: “I’m sure of one thing,” [Helen] said earnestly [to her friends]. “It hurts to—to let go of anything beautiful. But something will come to take its place, something different, of course, but better. The future’s always better than we can possibly think it will be. We ought to know that—really know it. We ought to be so sure of it that we’d let go of things more easily, strike out toward the next thing. Like swimming, you know. Confidently. We ought to live confidently. Because whatever’s ahead, it’s going to be better than we’ve had. I tell you, girls, I know it is.”

Researching A Wilder Rose

I've often thought that writers and readers of historical novels have the best of both worlds. Historical fiction, when it's done well, gives us a deep view of historical events and people--not a deep, dry view, as in a history book, but a lively dramatic view that draws us in, makes us want to explore further.

I've been writing historical novels for twenty years, beginning with the Robin Paige mysteries that Bill and I wrote from 1993-2005, then my Beatrix Potter Cottage Tales series (2003-2011), and more recently, the Darling Dahlias. Several of the China Bayles mysteries have historical backstories, as well: Bloodroot, Wormwood, and Widow's Tears, for example. If you're guessing that I love to dig around in the past, you've guessed right.

It might be that my love of historical fiction began with the Little House series, which I read to tatters when I was a child. And then, in the 1980s, as an adult, I bumped into The First Four Years, a short novel set after These Happy Golden Years. I was surprised and dismayed: the book was not the same as the eight books in the series.The story was clumsy, the writing was clunky. What had happened to my favorite author to make her write as if she'd never written a book before?

I began searching for a possible explanation. I discovered that Laura's daughter was a well-known bestselling author in the 1920s and 30s: Rose Wilder Lane, named for the wild roses on the Dakota prairies. Suspicions aroused (did Rose give her mother a hand with those first eight books, but not with the ninth?), I began to dig. My explorations took me to Rocky Ridge Farm, then to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, where I found Rose's diaries, journals, and letters--and Laura's letters to her, as well.

I also began to read the work of scholars who were writing about the Little House books, particularly Rosa Ann Moore and William Anderson. About that time (1993) William Holtz published The Ghost in the Little House, and I could see the writing of the Little House books in the Depression-era context of Rose's and Laura's lives. I went back to the Hoover Library for more of Rose's unpublished work, and began a concentrated search through the primary materials Holtz had used for his biography.

But in those years, I was just getting started with the China Bayles series, and then Bill suggested that we write the Robin Paige mysteries, which led to the Beatrix Potter series, and . . . well, you get the picture. It wasn't until I had finished with the eight Cottage Tales that I had the time to go back to my boxes and stacks and shelves of Rose Wilder Lane (RWL) materials, and especially to her diaries and journals--and start thinking about the kind of book I might like to write. A scholarly, academic book? A narrative nonfiction for a general audience? After trying out several approaches, I finally decided to write a novel. I have, after all, been writing novels for nearly three decades now. An easy decision, right?

Maybe. But it would have to be a fact-based novel--tightly fact-based. All of us who grew up loving the Little Houses deserve to know the real story behind the books. And I do mean real: a story that details the way the books were actually written, based on the real, day-to-day record that Rose kept, as well as on the letters her mother wrote when they were working on Plum Creek and Silver Lake. I want readers to see and understand why the two women kept their collaboration a secret and how the books changed both their lives, in the short run and the long run.

The novel is nearly finished now, and will be published in October (the current plan). To satisfy those readers (like myself) who always want to know more, there will also be a Companion, which documents the fiction and connects it with the research: the facts, references, and sources (published and unpublished) from which I've created the story. I hope that both the novel and the Companion will help readers see through the long-standing myth that Laura wrote the books by herself, with just a little editorial touch-up and some promotional boosts from her daughter Rose. That literary legend does a disservice to Rose, who deserves credit for her real contributions to the Little House books. It also does a disservice to Laura, who deserves to be known and respected for the brave, resourceful woman she was, not the literary miracle we imagine her to be. And I believe it does a disservice to us as readers, for we deserve to know the real, collaborative story behind the books we love: how they were written, and why, and by whom.

Reading Note. It rains. Slowly and moistly and indefatigibly. Little crystal drops are strung all along the wet-dark branches of the walnut and the elm outside these windows . . . The trees remain obstinately bare and uncolored all up the flint-gray slope of the hill, but the old oak on the edge of the gorge is creamy with blossoms. Yesterday afternoon Troub [Helen Boylston] and I walked to the top of the hill, and saw on the southern slope the blue of violets, like a reflection of the sky in water. We gathered two handkerchiefs full, and they are now a great mass in a bowl on my table. I do so wish that I could send you some, for it seems to me there are no violets like those that grow on Rocky Ridge.--RWL to Guy Moyston, April 8, 1925.

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A Wilder Rose

A Little Rose

A Little Rose

A little Rose, just past her second birthday, already a girl who knows her own mind.

We know a few facts about the early life of Rose Wilder Lane. We know that she was born on Dec. 5, 1886, in a claim shanty outside the town of De Smet, in Dakota Territory. Her parents were 19-year-old Laura Ingalls Wilder and 29-year-old Almanzo Wilder. Rose would be their only child; a son born in 1889 did not survive. After family illness, crop failures, and a house fire, the bank took the claim and the Wilders moved in with Laura's parents in De Smet, then with Almanzo's parents in Spring Valley MN. In 1890, they movedto Westville FL, hoping that the warm climate would improve Almanzo's health. But they were Plains people, and the Florida heat and humidity proved uncomfortable, so in 1892 they took the train back to De Smet, where Laura worked as a dressmaker and Almanzo did odd jobs around town. By 1894, they had saved $100--enough, they hoped, to buy a farm in the "Land of the Big Red Apple," in southwestern Missouri, near Mansfield the "Gem City of the Ozarks." They moved there in 1894. Just seven years old, Rose was already a well-traveled child, and travel would be in her blood until the end of her days.

Those are facts. The rest of what we know about Rose's childhood comes from her--and since she was a consummate storyteller, the stories are embellished. But that's what makes a good story, isn't it? Take, for instance, the story she tells about the unsmiling and determined little girl in the calico dress, crocheted collar, and tatted cuffs who is pictured above. In the foreword to her mother's diary of the trip from De Smet to Mansfield (On the Way Home), she writes:

"I was 2 years 4 months when this picture was taken in April, 1889. I remember the picture-taking well, was impressed by the photographer’s stupid pretense that there was a little bird in the camera. The photographer also kept putting my right hand on top of the left, and I kept changing them back because I wanted my carnelian ring to show. And in the end I won out."

Rose had a remarkable memory, an even more remarkable gift for story, and a way of enlarging personal experience that made it memorable and special. You can read more about her early childhood in On the Way Home and in several pieces collected in The Little House Sampler: "Rose Wilder Lane, by Herself"; "Memories of Grandma's House"; and "Innocence," a darkly compelling short story based on the Wilders' time in the piney woods of the Florida Panhandle. "Innocence" won second prize in the O'Henry Awards for 1922--and it wasn't the only O'Henry Prize Rose would win in her writing career.

 

Reading note, from Rose's foreword to On The Way Home, p. 12, describing the Wilders' going-away from De Smet in 1894: "Away from Grandma's house with its rag-carpets and rocking-chair, the hymn books on the organ, my very own footstool; away from the chalky schoolroom where angelic Miss Barrows taught Kindergarten, Primer, First and Second Readers; away from the summer sidewalks where grasshoppers hopped in the dry grass and the silver-lined poplar leaves rattled overhead; away from the gaunt gray empty house, and from Mrs. Sherwood and her sister who sometimes on sweltering afternoons asked me to fech ten cents' worth of icecre am from the far-away icecream parlor, and shared it with me; away from De Smet to The Land of the Big Red Apple."

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A Wilder Rose