Caroline, Little House Revisited by Sarah Miller

 genre: adult historical fiction

As any lover of the Little House on the Prairie books know, Carolina is the given name of Ma, Laura Ingalls Wilder's mother.  While Laura's experience on the trail and on the prairie is so familiar, in Caroline, her story is told from the point of view of her mother as she and Pa lead their family to their new homestead in Kansas.  As they leave Wisconsin and everything familiar, Caroline is the glue that keeps her family of four together amidst the wonders of nature and the forces of man.

For myself, I LOVED reimagining Laura's experience through Caroline's eyes.   Sarah Miller has captured the female experience in an uncannily precise and intimate way, not shying away from the more human parts of the western expansion experience.  The lack of bathroom facilities and privacy of any kind, the heavy tasks of keeping people fed and clean, the minding of the children in an age before any kid of modern entertainment in a land full of danger - THIS resonated with me.  Caroline's struggles with both selfishness and undying love, her appreciation for and yet frustration with her husband, all while so isolated and vulnerable.  I just really appreciated this perspective of womanhood, of a woman doing what is essentially my same job as a stay-at-home-mom, in a different time period.  Sometimes Caroline's insights on even just BEING a woman, the way the world has stifled and put us in a box but also the very deliberate and specific skills that we can have that are sometimes beyond even the thoughts of men - were so spot on.

So, for all this is it sometimes raw - our author doesn't shy away from the fact that they are in Indian Territory and that they are essentially squatting on stolen land.  There are raw bits of sickness and childbirth, lovemaking and doctoring - the frontier was a wild and painful place to try and make a life.  For me, maybe partly because I knew the general plot, it was a bit slow going. I'm making it 4.5 stars instead of the five it maybe deserves but it took me so long to read it - but part of that might be that I was savoring the truly lovely writing, pencil in hand, drenched in another world and time.