Several generations of readers have been reared on Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, books that have achieved a near mythological quality in the American literary imagination. What few people know, however, is that nearly every sentence of those classic books was shaped at the hands of a gifted ghostwriter: Wilder's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. Over the years, as Laura Ingalls Wilder became a literary phenomenon, her daughter slipped quietly into obscurity. In this biography, William Holtz presents an intimate account of Lane's adventure-filled life as a writer, a daughter and a political theorist. Drawing on her letters and diaries, he traces her life from her own gruelling childhood on the prairie to her final journey overseas, this last trip as a Vietnam War correspondent at the age of 78. After beginning her career as a journalist, Rose Wilder Lane returned to her parents' Rocky Ridge farm in Missouri to aid them in a time of financial difficulty. As the Little House books began to win followers for her mother, Rose Wilder Lane's "editorial" role in them usurped more and more of her time. The secrecy of the collaboration, along with her parents' continued financial dependence on Lane, contributed to an increasingly thorny relationship between mother and daughter. In a tale that should surprise every fan of the Litte House books, Holtz chronicles Lane's painful and humiliating struggle to free herself from the emotional bondage to her mother that plagued her for much of her life. Between intervals with her mother at the farm, Lane continued her work as a journalist and free-lance writer, travelling throughout the United States and to such exotic localities as Albania and Baghdad. She wrote the biographies of Henry Ford, Charlie Chaplin and Jack London. As ghostwriter, she stood behind such figures as Frederick O'Brien and Lowell Thomas as well as her mother. As a political thinker, Lane held fast to a grass-roots libertarian view during the Roosevelt years and beyond, an effort that produced a protege who became a Libertarian presidential candidate in 1976. Rose Wilder Lane left no small legacy. Her silent contribution to the Little House books made them American classics. As a political thinker, she left a small but potent body of work that still stands as an inspiration for contemporary civil libertarians. In "The Ghost in the Little House", William Holtz reveals the passionate life of a singularly gifted woman struggling to find a centre of meaning in her life.
"Did Laura Ingalls Wilder really write the 'Little House' books? William Holtz's biography of Rose Wilder Lane, The Ghost in the Little House, answers this question in a way that will jolt fans of the much-loved children's series. . . . Holtz's vivid and sympathetic biography brings to our attention the real accomplishments of a remarkable and complicated woman who is no longer nameless: Rose Wilder Lane, co-author of the 'Little House' books."--San Antonio Express-News
"[A] respectful, penetrating, deeply detailed biography . . . that well supports Holtz's contention that 'everything that makes the Little House books stand up and sing is what the daughter did to them."--Kirkus Reviews
"A significant achievement. Holtz has uncovered the buried life of a woman whose struggle to separate herself from her mother and forge her own independent identity replicates the dilemma of many women, whose dedication to writing involved the sacrifice of her own ambitions, whose experience of American life during decades of cataclysmic social and political change comprises a life worth telling. . . . In setting the record straight with fullness, fairness and detail, William Holtz has made a genuine contribution to American life and letters."--Washington Post Book World
"Holtz's book makes clear for the first time that [Lane] achieved something important and lasting in her writing with the Little House books. His argument about the collaboration between the two women is entirely convincing, and the next time I see the little House series on the shelf at the bookstore, I'll imagine Rose Wilder Lane's name next to her mother's on their covers."-- Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Drawing on diaries and letters, Holtz . . . details Lane's life (1886-1968) in an engrossing study that highlights her troubled relationship with an apparently cold and manipulative mother."-- Publishers Weekly
"Drawing on diaries and letters, Holtz . . . details Lane's life (1886-1968) in an engrossing study that highlights her troubled relationship with an apparently cold and manipulative mother."-- Publishers Weekly
"A significant achievement. Holtz has uncovered the buried life of a woman whose struggle to separate herself from her mother and forge her own independent identity replicates the dilemma of many women, whose dedication to writing involved the sacrifice of her own ambitions, whose experience of American life during decades of cataclysmic social and political change comprises a life worth telling. . . . In setting the record straight with fullness, fairness and detail, William Holtz has made a genuine contribution to American life and letters."--Washington Post Book World
"Holtz's book makes clear for the first time that [Lane] achieved something important and lasting in her writing with the Little House books. His argument about the collaboration between the two women is entirely convincing, and the next time I see the little House series on the shelf at the bookstore, I'll imagine Rose Wilder Lane's name next to her mother's on their covers."-- Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Did Laura Ingalls Wilder really write the 'Little House' books? William Holtz's biography of Rose Wilder Lane, The Ghost in the Little House, answers this question in a way that will jolt fans of the much-loved children's series. . . . Holtz's vivid and sympathetic biography brings to our attention the real accomplishments of a remarkable and complicated woman who is no longer nameless: Rose Wilder Lane, co-author of the 'Little House' books."--San Antonio Express-News
"[A] respectful, penetrating, deeply detailed biography . . . that well supports Holtz's contention that 'everything that makes the Little House books stand up and sing is what the daughter did to them."--Kirkus Reviews
