Though Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957) and Betty Smith (1896-1972) were near-contemporaries and writers of autobiographical fiction, the two authors were worlds apart in their experiences.
Wilder is familiar to millions of readers for her Little House books, which track the life of the Ingalls family—Ma, Pa, and their three daughters—on the Great Plains in the 1870s and 1880s. Their transportation is a horse-drawn wagon and they live for a time in a sod house. Prairie fires, swarms of grasshoppers, and a long, cold winter bring them to near-ruin.
