Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder

I'm having trouble just starting the review of this book. It's difficult even to rate this. I've wanted to read this for a long time and I was on reserve for it on Overdrive for a ridiculously long time, also. Maybe the reason that I was on the reserve list, so long was that it took others an incredibly long time to read it as it took me. In fact, I don't know when the last time was it took me so long to read a book (4 weeks) . 4 WEEKS!! That is unbelievable; I usually read a book a week, give or take. I know nonfiction often takes longer to read than fiction, but 4 WEEKS? The last time it took me that long to read a book, which I faithfully read each day was many years ago, probably decades ago and then it was usually because I did not have the time to sit and read it on a daily basis.

This book is incredibly dense, full of 25 cent words, which were totally unnecessary. Nearly 85 pages of this tome are footnotes, some of which offer further information while some just offer the source or are merely stating. Ibid. There were several times during the book, when I felt like I might DNF this, but then I went a little further and found some interesting parts, For the most part, when you think of the book in its entirety, there were more parts that were boring and/or irritating than that I sincerely enjoyed. I appreciate that the author went into some, well maybe a lot (maybe a little too much of the historical background. This was a highly detailed accounting of the life of not only Laura Ingalls Wilder, but her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. Rose Wilder Lane was not a nice person. She has a history of bizarre behavior, and relatively radical political views; she suffered sometimes from severe depression, often with suicidal thoughts. It appears to me that she may have been manic-depressive and/or suffered from bipolar disorder. (Is manic-depressive and bipolar disorder, the same thing?)

This book is highly-rated. There are many, many 3, 4 and 5 stars on Goodreads. The book has even won a Pulitzer, as well as many other awards. I usually don't do well on books that have won prestigious awards, like the Pulitzer and others for great writing, etc, Goodreads Awards for the best book of the year in several different genres are the exception, but those awards aregiven based on what "normal" everyday readers think.

Personally, I give this 1.5 stars and round it up to 2 stars, which might be generous, but since there were parts that I enjoyed and were interesting rounding it down to 1 star would not be giving the book justice.