I don’t remember having read These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder before (first published 1943). I believe that when I read through the series, my oldest daughter got “bored” because Laura was no longer a girl. This month my nine-year-old and I did enjoy it. While it isn’t a favorite of mine and some pacing issues mar its flow, These Happy Golden Years is a satisfying conclusion to the Laura story as she enters adulthood, responsibility, courtship, and marriage to Almanzo Wilder.
The book begins the week after Little Town on the Prairie ends. Laura has secured a preliminary teaching certificate and leaves almost immediately for the Brewster settlement 12 miles away, where she will teach four students in a small schoolhouse. This is an eye-opening experience, not just because she has to teach a student her own age but also because the house in which she boards is one where husband and wife live with hate, yelling, and derision. After Laura’s loving home atmosphere, this is shock. She is rescused by Almanzo Wilder, who comes for her every week in his sleigh and takes her home, even through storms and extreme cold. Of course, 16-year-old Laura declares she only accepts his rides because she wants to go home, not because she likes Almanzo. The reader sees otherwise.
After Laura’s three-months teaching in Brewster, she returns home. The next parts of the book lack the details that the beginning of this one did, and I felt that time passed much too rapidly. That’s one of the reasons it does not stand out as a favorite. Laura has some funny learning moments, such as the week she is in charge while Ma and Pa leave to take Mary to school. She must “Keep house” for her younger sisters and they do a full house cleaning, where beds outside end up soaked in the rain. She takes on a job sewing in town. She returns to the classroom for some more schooling and a higher-level teaching certificate. She works in another small school with a few students, this time not as far from home.
These are glossed over, with the highlight of her week continuously being the buggy rides and sleigh rides with Almanzo. Like him, she loves the horses he trains, and learns to control them, even as they are still being broken. The two years of courtship pass quickly, and the detailed descriptions of life reappear in the later part of the book in which Laura and Almanzo marry.
The detail about walking into her own home, a home that Almanzo has made for them, is touching to me. We see that she has come full circle, from little girl in the big woods, to a wife of her own. I wish this volume had fleshed out the humor and experiences a little bit more. I wanted to know Laura from ages 16 to 18. I guess the saying is true, though. When you get to a certain age, you pick up speed. Besides, being an adult is not nearly as much fun as being a kid. The ordinary no longer seems extraordinary.
These Happy Golden Years was awarded a Newbery Honor in 1944. I rate it as “pretty good” and say “Keep it and read it” if you have read the other books. Otherwise, it’s more of a “maybe if you have time” book.
Newbery rating scale: FANTASTIC | REALLY GOOD | PRETTY GOOD | OKAY | BLAH
What to do with this Newbery: KEEP IT AND READ IT | MAYBE IF YOU HAVE TIME | DON’T BOTHER
Despite all that, Laura’s fictionalized biographies were extraordinary fun to read. I have not yet written about two of her books. First is Almanzo’s childhood story, Farmer Boy, which my daughter and I are listening to right now. The last chronological book, The First Four Years, is essentially a rough draft that Laura wrote about the beginning years of her marriage, taking off right where These Happy Golden Years ended. But it was never edited or published before her death. It reads as such a draft (so far) and I’m disappointed not to have her own fictionalized and edited version of the difficult events at the beginning of her marriage.
