Little House on Rocky Ridge by Roger Lea MacBride (illustrated by David Gilleece).
Title: Little House on Rocky Ridge.
Author: Roger Lea MacBride (illustrated by David Gilleece).
Genre: Fiction, bildungsroman, children's lit, family saga, fiction based on real events, historical fiction, survival, western, YA.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1993.
Summary: Meet Rose Wilder, Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter, and the last of the Little House girls. Rose and her parents, Laura and Almanzo, say good-bye to Ma and Pa Ingalls and Laura's sisters, and in a covered wagon containing all their possessions, make their way across the drought-stricken Midwest to the lush green valleys of southern Missouri. The journey is long and not always easy, but at the end is the promise of a new home and a new life for the Wilders.
My rating: 7.5/10
My Review:
♥
♥ Rose felt a little better after that. She saw in the glow on Mama's and Papa's faces that going to Missouri would be an adventure. It made them happy just to speak of it. But when Rose thought of leaving behind Grandma and Grandpa, and her aunts, she still felt a hollowness inside.
♥ "I was just thinking: I'm twice as old as I was when Ma and Pa brought my sisters and me to Dakota," she said. "There was only grassland then, as far as you could ride. And plenty of wild game. If only I had a poet's brain, or an artist's hand, to preserve those memories forever."
Rose tried to see the prairie in her mind, with no town, no dusty streets, no horses tied to the hitching posts switching their tails, no people walking, no dogs sleeping in the yards. But she couldn't imagine how it had looked when Mama and Papa first came there.
♥ Rose took the cup in her hands and carefully sipped the steaming liquid. It wasn't sweet, and it wasn't sour. She took another sip.
"Well, Rose," Mama said. "How do you like it?>"
"It tasted like... tears, I think!" She put the cup down with a little rattle and made a face. The grown-ups laughed.
"Maybe it needs a little sugar," Grandma said. She stirred in a spoonful of brown sugar. Rose sipped again, but then she didn't drink any more. She didn't see why grown-ups liked tea so well.
♥ "I'm not crying," said Mama quickly. "I'm only... remembering. Pa played us to sleep with that fiddle when I was little. It's my first memory. He played by all those campfires and through blizzards and drought and sickness. We never could have gotten through it all without Pa's fiddle."
"Music does put heart in a body," said Papa.
The whole curve of the sky was filled with moonlight over the flat dark earth and the dark houses. The air had the sleepy feel of the still of night. But soon it would be morning.
When the sun had climbed high over the prairie, they would be gone, Rose thought, on their way to find a new home.
♥ Rose loved the frisky way the colts played and chased each other. She loved their long slender legs, and the nervous way they tossed their heads. And there was a trembling, terrifying wildness about them that Rose also loved. Their hearts were strong and as free as the prairie itself. Just watching them gallop across the broad flat land, their manes and tails fluttering, made Rose's heart soar.
♥ Everything tasted delicious. Mama said hunger was the best spice.
♥ Rose wriggles into her covers. Papa blew out the lantern. Then, from the darkness, came all the little night sounds, curling around Rose like a blanket. The chickens fluttered sleepily in their coop beside the wagon; the cooling night air whispered in the grass; and over it all the crickets chirped a steady chorus.
Then Rose heard a new sound, high-pitched yapping and howling, far off in the distance. She had never heard anything so lonely and haunting. Her scalp crinkled.
.."It's just coyotes," said Mama.
..It had been such an exciting day. She couldn't wait to tell Grandma, and Aunt Mary, and...
But then Rose remembered: There was no one to tell things to. They weren't going back. Their whole lives were in that wagon now.
♥ "It carries me back through the years, traveling this way," Papa said. "It puts spring in a man's step and hope in his heart."
"Lately the past has been stepping all over the heels of the present," said Mama. "This morning I could almost hear my ma's voice, calling me to wash for breakfast."
♥ "By golly," he said. "It looks like the whole of Dakota is moving."
Rose scrambled through the wagon to look out the back. "Mama, look!"
Along the road behind them, straight over the low curves of the prairie, covered wagons were coming. There were small groups of wagons, with spaces between the groups. They were coming as far as the eye could see. The wind blew away from those wagons a haze of dust that became a thin gold mist in the slanting sunshine.
"I guess hard time are driving them out too," Mama said. Her forehead wrinkled into little knobs of worry. "I wish we had taken another road, Manly. I don't like the idea of camping among covered wagon folks. ..We know where we're going, and we're traveling with friends. But with all the country pulled up and drifting, and so much lawlessness and horse stealing, who can say what sort of people are about? Besides, there's Rose to consider. Goodness knows what she might see and hear."
♥ "Are those covered wagon folks?" Rose whispered.
"Of course they are," Paul said. "Look. They have a wagon. And it has a cover. Just like ours."
"I know," Rose said. "But Mama said she doesn't like to camp among covered wagon folks."
"What's the harm in it?" Paul asked. "This is exciting. I never had so much fun as I'm having right this minute."
Rose looked at George, but he just shrugged his shoulders. She knew the hundred dollar bill had something to do with not being covered wagon folks. But she was not supposed to tell anyone about that. Still, she was confused. Those people singing and dancing did not seem dangerous. They did not look lawless, either.
♥
♥ "You see, Bess, all the roads are the same," said Papa.
"Yes," Mama said. "It seems the whole country is turned loose. It's a sin and a shame what the government in Washington did to folks, promising them free land. Free land, indeed.
"It only shows that no good ever comes of getting something for nothing. It nearly ruined my pa, and look what it did to us. Every soul ought to pay his way in this world. It's the only honest and true way to live."
♥
Rose looked back to see what Papa was doing. Now the line of wagons waiting for the ferry stretched far, far back, too far to see the end of it. Everywhere was confusion. Babies cried. Children screamed. Horses reared and pawed the air, or ran loose with men trying to catch them. Chickens squawked.
Behind and above, the whole earth rose up in a cloud of dust that curled overhead. The sky had a strange, flat light. Then the sunset turned the huge dust cloud to gold.
"That's your last sight of Dakota," Mama murmured. She said it in such a strange voice that Rose looked at her. She was shocked. Mama's cheeks were damp with tears! Now Rose's throat ached. Her eyes burned. Then, before she could stop herself, she was crying, too. She was afraid, without being sure why.
♥ "Why are you writing everything down?" Rose asked. "You never did that before."
"No, I didn't," Mama said. "Well, it is like a letter to myself, about our journey. When our trip is over, I'll keep it to remind me."
"I couldn't ever forget the Big Muddy," Rose said.
Mama said she probably wouldn't either. "But small, everyday things are easy to forget," she said. "You will want to remember those things. Life will be changed when you are grown, just the way life has changed since I was a little girl. The wild prairie is tamed now. Big cities are lit by electrified lamps. People can even visit each other from miles apart, simply by talking into a box. The only way to measure our progress is to read about what this country used to be."
♥ Country boys and girls never wore shoes in summer-except to church and Sunday dinner, of course.
♥ Rose took two to show Mama She could feel the heat from the nesting hen in her palm. "Can I keep them? We could put them under the chickens and see if they hatch."
But Mama said it was a prairie hen's business to raise her chicks. So Rose put the eggs back.
♥
♥ Lines of wagons came from the east, going west. Other lines of wagons came from the west, going east. Everywhere they met wagons, people asked the same questions: "Where did you come from?" "Where are you going?" "How are the crops up your way?"
Everyone was looking for a better life. But no one knew where it was.
♥ The men all wore long beards that rested on the fronts of their crisp blue shirts. The boys dressed the same as the men.
The women wore handkerchiefs to over their heads. Thick braids shining like gilded ropes hung down their backs. The blue of the women's dresses matched the men's shirts, and they wore them over brilliant white blouses with long white sleeves. Their dresses stood out stiff and thick with petticoats. Some wore aprons. The little girls dressed the same as their mothers.
The Russians seemed to be all one family. Rose thought they were beautiful. Just looking at them made her smile. And she loved the mysterious sound of their words.
♥ "Kansas is beautiful," Mama declared one night, putting down her pencil. "If I had been the Indians I would have scalped more white folks before I ever would have left it."
♥ Oranges! Rose couldn't wait to tell Paul. She had eaten only three oranges in her life. They grew far away from South Dakota.
♥
♥
♥ "This is it," Papa said. "This is Mansfield, Gem City of the Ozarks."
..Railroad tracks ran along their right side, sitting high on an embankment. Then they disappeared behind some large white houses with big yards and shade trees. In the backyards Rose could see chickens and pigs.
A gravel path ran alongside the road. Queen Anne's lace bloomed beside the path, the delicate heads nodding in the gentle breeze.
They drove slowly down that street, past more houses, into the town square. The streets around the square bustled with wagons and people, all flowing toward the depot on the far side. A train whistled, and Rose spotted purple smoke unfurling over the trees. Boxes were being brought onto the platform with scraping, thumping sounds. Beyond the depot, on the other side of the tracks, a flour mill puffed small clouds of steam.
The square was a tidy park surrounded by wooden hitching posts. Teams were tied up all around it, the horses' tails swishing away flies. In the middle of the park, a white bandstand gleamed brightly. Delicate lacy molding decorated the roof and railing. Some children played there, pretending to give speeches.
Rows of buildings faced into the park from the other three sides of the square. "Drugs. H. Coday," read the sign on one building. "Reynolds Bro's Cheap Cash House," said another. There was an opera house, a bank, and a saloon. Men sat in tipped-back chairs in front of the stores, watching the comings and goings.
"Seems to be a thriving little town, doesn't it, Bess?" Papa said. Just then the train whistled hoarsely, and the thundering engine slid into the depot, screeching to a stop.
Rose and Papa looked at Mama, waiting for her to speak. Mama's bright, searching eyes looked at everything. "Yes," she finally said. "Yes, it does. I do believe this is where we stop, Manly."
"And where we start anew," added Papa. He reached behind Rose to squeeze Mama's hand. Snuggled between Mama and Papa, seeing the happiness in their faces, Rose felt safe and contented. Their journey really was at an end. Now her travel-weary eyes looked at Mansfield full of curiosity and hope.
♥
♥ They tasted wild greens after letting the mares sniff and nibble. Mama said not to eat anything the horses refused.
♥ "He needs his own name. Now, what's a good name for a faithful watchdog? How about... Fido?"
"Fido? What's a Fido?"
"That is a very old Latin word. It means faithful and loyal."
♥ "Now don't go blaming yourself, Bess," Papa said gently. He put a hand on her shoulder. "We aren't licked by a long sight. We've always managed. Something will turn up."
"You know as well as I do: Nothing turns up that you won't turn up yourself," Mama said.
♥ "My farming days are over," Mr. Cooley said. "I'll sell the second wagon and team. That will put a roof over our heads till I find steady work in town. I'm tired of fighting the land just to keep storekeepers and bankers in silk stockings."
"I guess we will always be farmers," Mama said with a sigh. "What's bred in the bone never will come out of the flesh. Town life doesn't agree with me. It's so peaceful in the country."
♥ Then Papa gave Rose a brushy kiss.
"Thank you, girls," he said. "We haven't much, but sometimes I think there isn't another thing in the world I'd lift a finger to take."
When Papa said that, Rose knew everything would be all right.
♥
♥ Finally, when Mama and Papa finished talking Rose could ask, "What's a Panic?"
"Well, that's what happens when folks run out of money," said Papa.
"Couldn't they make some more?" Rose asked.
Both Mama and Papa chuckled. "Some politicians in Washington think so," said Papa. "But no, Rose. You cannot make more money like more flapjacks. It must be earned. And it must be worth something. A piece of paper isn't really money until there's gold in U.S. treasury to back it up."
♥ Rose was so astonished she couldn't move. She looked where Mama had been sitting. At first her eyes did not believe what they saw. Staring back at her was the biggest spider she had ever seen. It was as big as a person's hand! Its huge body and long thick legs were covered in black and reddish-brown fur, as sleep as horsehair.
.."What is it?" asked Rose. She wanted to look at the spider again, to see its fur. But there was no sign of it anywhere.
"It's a tarantula," he said. "You'd never have cause to shoot it. I never did hear of one biting nobody, and they aren't poisonous even if it did. You see 'em mostly round this time of year. They're looking for dens for the winter, I guess. ..But don't you worry, ma'am. Boys take tarantulas to school right in their pants pockets, to scare the little girls with. They cain't be too harmful at that."
♥
♥ Papa opened the door slowly. His tired eyes shone happily in the dim light. "Well, I'll be..." he said. He slowly looked around the room. Then Rose looked too. So did Mama. Even though they had worked on it all day, this was the first time they had really seen it as their new home.
The little sewing chest that Papa had made for Mama out of old cigar boxes stood near the bed. Its polished wood gleamed in the lamplight. The autograph quilt that the family and friends in De Smet had sewed for them lay neatly on the big bed. Papa's good hat hung from a peg by the front door. He went over and picked it up.
"A fellow knows he's home when he has his own place to hang his hat," said Papa. Mama looked at him with soft eyes. Her face glowed with pride. The clock filled the silence with its peaceful ticking.
♥ The ground was rocky almost everywhere. In some places huge boulders stuck out of the ground. But Mama said Papa would clear the land and someday they would have smooth, rolling meadows and pastureland.
"For now, it is a very rocky ridge of land," said Mama. She looked at Rose, her face suddenly bright. "There's a thought. We can call the place Rocky Ridge Farm."
♥
♥ "We can start piecing a new quilt while we wait for Papa."
Mama began by spreading out the bits of cloth on the bed. Then she laid the pattern on them at various angles to see how best to cut the scraps without waste. With her sharp shears, she cut out the squares and triangles she would stitch together to make the quilt.
She held up a scrap for Rose to see. "That's the turkey-red dress your aunt Grace wore the time she recited 'Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight,'" Mama said. "How lovely she looked.
"And this is the last bit of tat dress Grandma hated so. She wore it every summer to please Grandpa, because he'd bought the goods to surprise her. But she never could bear plaids.
"And here! This is the dress I wore to the Fourth of July, that time the horses ran away. You were too little to remember that." Mama sighed. "A quilt is something human, Rose. There isn't one of my dresses I wouldn't mind having a scrap of right now."
Rose fingered her blue calico. It was her oldest, most faded dress. It was tight in the arms, and it had a big patch in the seat. But someday a piece of it would remind her of the journey to Missouri.
♥ ..Rose liked reading everything. In De Smet she had even read the Chicago Inter-Ocean, a newspaper that Papa sometimes brought home. She didn't understand all the words, but it didn't matter.
Rose knew that words were a kind of magic that anybody could make. Words told stories, which Rose loved better than anything. She thought about making up her own words, even her own secret language.
♥
♥
At dinner they all looked out the window as they ate, watching the leaves fluttering and the birds flitting by.
"Windows are like pictures," Mama said. "Only better. They're never the same for two hours together."
♥ Each day was full of chores. It was Rose's chore to make sure there was enough cookwood by the stove. She peeled potatoes, or sorted beans, or stirred cornmeal. She set the table before meals and helped wash and dry the dishes after. Then she put them away in the dish box, all except the bread plate. Rose was too short to reach the mantel, where it belonged.
She swept the cabin and made her trundle bed. Then she pushed it away, under the big bed.
She carried buckets of water for the chickens, for the horses, for cooking, for laundry, for the washbasin, for the dishes, for housecleaning, for Saturday baths, and for drinking. She fed the chickens and hunted eggs. Once a week, she helped Mama clean the soiled leaves out of the henhouse. Then they put down a bed of fresh ones.
On Mondays, Rose helped Mama wash the clothes. She stirred the big tin basin full of steaming hot water. She wasn't strong enough to scrub their dresses and Papa's overalls. But she could scrub the socks. Then she helped rinse everything, three times, and hang it to dry. On Tuesdays, she helped Mama with ironing. On Fridays, they cleaned the whole house, rafters to floors. On Sunday, Mama baked bread. Rose helped mix the dough.
In between there was mending and sewing. And Rose had her lessons.
There was hardly time left over for playing, except on Sundays. They still got up early to do their morning chores. The horses had to be fed and watered, no matter what day it was. The chickens must be pampered. Stove wood must be gathered.
But after breakfast, and after Mama had read to them from the Bible, Papa napped, Mama wrote, and Rose read one of Mama's poetry books. A fire crackled on the hearth; the air was rich with the smell of Sunday dinner cooking on the stove. They were safe and snug in their little log house.
♥
♥ That night the family sat down to Sunday supper of corn bread and rabbit stew. Fido got his share, too. "My little prairie Rose is becoming quite the woodsman," said Papa.
"Yes, Rose," Mama agreed. "That rabbit was so plump, there will be gravy enough for tomorrow's dinner."
But Rose did not feel like a woodsman. And even though she was very hungry, she ate just her corn bread.
"You've hardly touched your supper," Mama finally said. "Are you ill?"
"No," Rose said quietly. "I'm not very hungry."
"I'm surprised at you, Rose. You've liked rabbit stew when I've made it before."
Papa looked at Rose thoughtfully for a moment. Then he laid down his fork and wiped his mustache on his napkin. "Come here," he said gently. Rose went and sat on his knee. "You know, your capturing that rabbit was a lucky stroke for us."
"It was?" said Rose.
"Yes indeed," said Papa. "We must all keep up our strength, to work this farm and build it. And every meal we harvest from our own land is a lucky stroke, because it is a meal we don't have to earn by cutting, hauling, and selling wood. That rabbit you caught is helping to keep us free and independent, Rose. So long as we can live off our land, we will never be beholden to others."
Then Mama asked, "Do you remember what it says in the Bible about harvesting?"
"What?"
"It says, 'To every thing there is a season: a time to plant, and a time to pluck that which is planted.' It was time to pluck up that rabbit, Rose. To harvest its life, to nourish and sustain our own. You can be proud that you helped feed this family."
Rose had never thought of rabbits as a harvest, like wheat. Alva knew it. Now Rose did too.
She went back to her dinner and by the last bite Rose remembered how much she liked Mama's rabbit stew.
♥ "They were stripping the bark right off the apple trees. They ruined a whole row before I caught them."
"Now what?" said Mama. "We can't shoot them. Surely they belong to some farmer."
"I'm certain they do," said Papa. "Missouri has free-range laws. A farmer can let his hogs run wild, even on someone else's land, until he's ready to go find and butcher them. Each farmer notches his hogs' ears with a special mark, to tell whose hog is whose."
"I never heard of such an outlandish law," said Mama.
♥ Every tree, every limb, every single leaf and blade of grass, the house, the henhouse, the wagon-everything in the whole outside world-wore a coat of silvery white. The silvered trees looked like white lace. The frosted henhouse looked like a cake that had been dusted with powdered sugar.
"You couldn't dream a world so beautiful," Mama said.
"What did that?" Rose asked.
"It's the hoarfrost," said Papa. "It comes when the fog freezes."
♥ It was a strange thing to see. Even Mama chuckled at the sight of a man driving a plow through the woods. But Papa said he didn't have to cut all those trees down. He would deaden them by chopping the bark off in a ring, all the way around the trunk. In the spring, no leaves would sprout, and sunlight could pour down through the bare limbs onto the garden.
"In a few years, the dead trees will rot and fall," Papa explained. It was a way a man could clear land without having to cut trees and pull out stumps.
♥ In the spring they would plant their own corn. They would plant alfalfa, too, to feed the horses. They would plant the apple trees properly. But Mama said they would have to make do with what they had this winter. They would have to endure.
South Dakota was wheat country, and they had always had bread to eat. But wheat didn't grow in the Ozarks. At first Rose had enjoyed all that corn bread, covered with molasses. But it wasn't special anymore. In fact, she was growing tired of it. She missed milk, too.
In the morning Mama gave her a steaming bowl of brown beans, a cup of water-and a piece of corn bread. Without thinking, Rose sighed and made a face. As soon as she did it, she looked to see if Mama and Papa has noticed. Mama was tending the stove, her back turned. Papa was bending over, tying his shoes.
Rose's face burned with shame. It was sinful to want things she couldn't have.
♥ "But Manly, how could we possibly pay for it?" Mama asked. "The chickens are neatly done laying until spring. With Cyrus gone, how can you cut and sell enough wood to make ends meet?"
"We own a farm, Bess," Papa replied. "We've got near a thousand apple trees, and good timber, and four healthy horses. We can get credit in town anytime we need."
"I don't like it. There must be another way," Mama said. Her hands balled into fists. "We'll need credit for spring planting as it is, for seed and supplies. I hate for us to start all over again slaving to fatten merchants and bankers. We came all this way to break that cycle of debt. Once you fall behind, you never catch up. It's every farmer's ruination."
♥
♥
♥ "It sounds fun living on a farm," George said as they walked back. "I hate working in the kitchen all the time. We hardly ever get to play. You play all the time."
Rose knew better, but she didn't say a word.
♥
Rose had not thought about it all day, in the excitement and confusion. But now she asked, "Why did all those strangers come to help build our barn?"
"It's a custom in these hills," Papa said. "They call it a working, Rose, when folks get together to help each other with some big chore. It's a chance to be sociable with your neighbors and do them a good turn at the same time. These Ozarkers know that everyone needs a hand sometime. It just happened to be our turn."
Rose remembered Mama reading from Romans: "Be of the same mind one toward another."
"But how could we ever help all those people back?" she asked. "There were so many."
"We'll be living here a long time, Rose," Mama said. "There will be no end of chances to show our thanks."