Be warned! This book is very, very different from all the other books in the Little House on the Prairie series. In fact, this book makes it easy to see how embellished the other books are and the positive spin that was put on them. Because it was published after the death of Laura and her daughter, it is not quite complete as well. It was taken directly from Laura's notebooks that were found in her belongings after her death and barely any editing was done on them. That being said, this book isn't necessarily worse than the others, just entirely different. The rest of the books, for those who have no read them, detailed Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood growing up and being a pioneer girl with her Ma, Pa, and three sisters.The First Four Years details the first four years of Laura and Almanzo's (who she calls Manlly in this book) marriage. They set up house on his tree claim after agreeing to try farming for three years. The first year passes quickly they seem happy enough and even more so when Laura is expecting. They have a daughter, Rose, and Laura completely loves her and is quite devoted to her. They remain somewhat happy but do manage to have quite the disastourous next few years. It seems that everything bad that can happen, will happen. They have to suffer through crops being destroyed, illness and other hardships in those four years.The characters in this are much changed from the other books. They are less like characters in this book and more like the real thing and its a little easier to see that Laura wrote from the heart and didn't try to make this an easy children's story. Its more of an outline with all the emotions she felt still showing. Manly is kind of distanced and doesn't seem to be as good with finances as he in in the other books. Laura is more mature but sadly leaves most of the decision to Manly.The book is short and is more a series of little stories from those four years. It is still mostly appropriate for children although there are a few sections that made even me pause. This could be considered a spoiler for the book so do beware. The first thing that made me pause was the Boasts (friends of Laura's) that offered to give Laura and Manly their best horse for Rose when she was a baby. Being childless they were probably desperate but it was still a shock to read about the situation in the children's book. The next was the death of their son. Maybe it was just me, but I couldn't help but feel that Laura seemed almost relieved when it was back to being just her, Rose, and Almanzo. I'm sure she cared for the boy (who wasn't alive long enough to be named) but I just didn't get that emotion in the book. I also noticed that in the writing of this book, some facts contradicted what the other books had say, like Manly having a milk cow before Laura married him.This book is still very important to read when it comes to the series. It is depressing and I can see why Laura never published it on her own, but it does explain a lot and continue her story. The entire series is a wonderful read and despite the tone of this book, it is vital to the collection.The First Four YearsCopyright 1971134 pages
After reading Pioneer Girl, I had to read this again. It's also Laura's first years as an independent adult, so I thought it would be fun to compare ...Wow, this is one depressing book. All through the Little House series, everything is always going to be alright as long as Pa is there and the family is together. Even when the family runs into hard times at Plum Creek, (the grasshoppers eat everything so the family can't pay for the new house, they can't afford to buy Christmas presents or even new clothes when the children outgrow theirs), there is not the ominous despair that pervades The First Four Years. (Though come to think of it, the family is pretty desperate when By the Shores of Silver Lake opens, so maybe Laura just skipped over the worst part). But in The First Four Years, four years of crops in a row are destroyed or smaller than expected, the couple goes into debt to pay for farm equipment, taxes, a hired girl when Laura is pregnant, the doctor when the two get diphtheria ... I wondered why Carrie didn't come to help when Laura was pregnant. Anyway, then Manly has a stroke and is partially disabled, their son dies, and their house burns down. What more could possibly go wrong? Also, the Little House books are warmly populated by family, but in this book Laura spends most of her time alone or with a toddler. Even though she asserts that their animals are fine company, I thought the book felt lonely.There are also darker stories in this book: the Boasts asking to take Rose in exchange for a horse because they can't have a child, and the Wilder's dog left because he couldn't be reconciled to Rose. And there were stories about incompetence that we didn't see in the earlier books: Laura makes a rhubarb pie to serve to the threshers but forgets the sugar, Manly forgets about the kick of his gun and gives himself a bloody nose trying to shoot a goose, Laura brings her baby sleigh-riding when it is 40 below. The worst mistake Ma makes in the books is switching her daughters' hair ribbons. It makes me wonder what Laura left out or glossed over in the Little House books, or perhaps didn't recognize because she was a child. I really wonder how Laura would have changed this book if she had prepared it for publication, and if she would have managed to rose-tint it enough to make it feel as uplifting as the series before it. As it reads now: everything is alright as long as she's under Pa's roof, and once she leaves everything falls apart.
What do You think about The First Four Years (2007)?
I read this book when I was a child and was shocked and disappointed by it. The tone is very flat and Laura and Almanzo seem like different people. It seems more of an outline than a full-fledged Little House book. I almost didn't re-read it this time to finish out my re-reading of the entire series, but I decided to steel myself to the task, and I'm actually glad I did. I knew what I was getting into, so it wasn't so shocking and disappointing this time around.This book begins by re-telling the end of These Happy Golden Years, but this time before they are married, Laura tells Almanzo she doesn't want to be a farmer's wife. How's that now? She feels farming is too difficult and they will always be poor, but Almanzo convinces her to try it out for three years. The couple starts out happily enough, racing their ponies on the prairie and enjoying being newlyweds, but even before the first year is over the tragedies start piling up right along with the growing debt. The first four years were pretty awful.Almanzo, who seemed so smart and prosperous throughout the entire series, makes horrible financial decisions, and Laura, who doubts the wisdom of what he's doing, lets him do it because "that's his business." (Granted, she's writing about these first four years 60 years after they happened, so she might be turning her hindsight into foresight...) When hail destroys their first wheat crop before it is harvested, he suggests they use the hail to make ice cream, and Laura is thoroughly disgusted with him. Also, it is revealed here that Almanzo did not build her that fabulous pantry in their house. He hired a carpenter to do it for him. And twice in the first year of marriage Laura orders things from the Montgomery Ward catalog, which just seems downright weird. It's as if this book showcases the reality of the pioneer/settlers life much more so than the first 8 books in the series do. This book lets you see that the first 8 books were idealized and sanitized, which doesn't make me love them any less, but it's kind of like finding out there's no such thing as Santa.
—Tracy
46 months - What a sad ending to the series. If you are looking for "Happily Ever After", then stop at "These Golden Happy Years". In fact this book probably should have been placed with the other later ones as a stand alone because it is written very differently, or at least was edited differently or not at all. It also recaps part of the book before from an adult and more personal perspective. I actually liked that because finally we could see that her and Almanzo actually had real conversations on their outings. In the previous book it seemed as though the interest was always one sided with Almanzo putting forth all the effort. This book really made you realize how very hard a farmers life was with the uncertainty of the elements and just think this was way before the Dust Bowl years! And how crazy optimistic farmers are, always hoping that next year they'll have that bumper crop that will pay all their debts and make them rich. What a hard life. Did it not seem surprising that the baby they lost was never mentioned by name? I suppose I should be more surprised that it was included as Mary's fever and loss of sight and Ma's loss of baby Charles was not chronicled and only mentioned after the fact. All in all we still enjoy learning the story of their first four years even if it ended on a very depressing note.
—Heather
This book, published posthumously, has a very different feel than the others. It is as if (and maybe it is that) Wilder wrote down the biographical notes, then stopped working on the book before fictionalizing the story. The result is a book in a very different style than the previous ones, and with some details (such as Almonzo's age) not agreeing with previously written facts. This book is more biographical than the other books. It should be read as an unfinished work, and there are many things, such as the Biblical tropes ('There was summer and there was winter, the first year") and the entire series only reference to sex (on morning sickness, Laura says, 'May says if you want to dance you have to pay the piper, and I danced and now I have to pay'), that I believe would have been removed from the final book if L.I.W. had finished it herself. (Both quotes are approximate - I don't have the book in front of me.) The story of this book is a good one, in that it shows how difficult it was for Laura and is not as triumphant as the others - it feels more real. And we see, in the end, how Laura makes a story out of her life, connecting farming directly to her experience as a pioneer, settling through time instead of through space, and justifies for herself and her readers the decisions she made. Certainly something is lost that this book was never finished by L.I.W., but as readers we also gain something, a hint at a slightly dirtier reality that the author kept carefully hidden in the other Little House books.
—Jonathan
