This Laura Ingalls Wilder diary is somewhat dull in parts, but the introduction by her daugher, Rose Wilder Lane, is worth the price of the book. Lane gives a first-hand account of the days before and after the journey that puts Laura in a new light. There are also several good photographs unavailable in other LHOTP books.

The Book, On The Way Home, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, is basically what it says it is. It is a Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894. This book was not that enjoyable just because it was just diary entries, like "today we ate meat." But other wise it was quite intriguing to discover the ways in which people traveled back in the day. In one part of the book it talks about how their covered wagon is not a covered wagon at all but that, "It had been a two-seated hack though now it only had the front seat." I also found it very enjoyable to read about the worth of money back then and compare it to now. It talks about how Laura had earned a whole one hundred dollars which today is like penny cash but back then was a fortune. In the beginning of the book there is a setting by Rose Wilder Lane, Laura's Daughter, which is a great piece of writing, it is like the rest of Laura's books in that it makes you want to read the rest of the book. I found this book interesting but a drag because of the slow pace in the book. If you would like to take a slow dip into history you should definitely read this book.

I can see why Laura Ingalls was able to write such good books about her early life on the Prairie. Her diaries were packed full of information and detail which she could later draw on. This is one of her diaries, with notes and a setting by her only child, daughter Rose Wilder Lane who was just a girl during this trip.

Laura Ingalls Wilder is, of course, famous for her little House books describing her childhood growing up at the edge of American settling in the mid Nineteenth century. Constantly pushing to new territories and places Ingalls father lead them west into Indian territory and later to Dakota where they settled. Laura met and Married Almanzo Wilder in de Smet, Dakota (Those happy Golden Years, and First Four Years) however those books left a me feeling a bit downhearted. Especially teh First Four Years, in which Almanzo 'Manly' and Laura seemed to be struck with tragedy (the house burning down) etc.

I found this diary to be hugely uplifting. It is not the detailed stories of her childhood, or living in a wagon as an adult settler, but it is a great tale detail of a family moving, of finding something which they could call their own, but far away in the Ozarks.

The most interesting thing to me about it, was that while they were on the road they were constantly being passed by other settlers, some going north and others going south, but the number of people on the move was amazing. At one point Rose adds a note that she looked back while they were about to cross the 'muddy' and there was a stream of covered wagons behind them.

Little details of what life was like really draw this out - tomatoes 10c a bushel and so they bought 2c worth. Huge watermelons for 5 c, Almanzo selling fire mats (ASBESTOS!) and all those little everyday details about life for Laura.

While she did not put her stories down until many decades later, clearly she was a writer in the making right from the beginning. Rose, her daughter has provided much of the detail necessary in here, but it would be really nice to see an illustrated edition of this showing the place as it was and as it is now. It was interesting to use Google Earth to view some of the trail which you can see right now. It gives it a sense of scale which I will not be able to do myself unless I acutally visit.

The only reason this has four stars is it is not as gripping as Ingalls novels - it is still a great read and highly recommended.

It's often said in tones of this-is-true-but-it's-also-heresy that Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of Laura and Almanzo Wilder, is the real unsung heroine in the Little House books, because while she let her mother have credit for the famous series, it was Rose, via her careful, invisible editing and re-writes, that turned cheery memoirs into beloved classics. I suspect that's true, but in the case of this book, it is beyond all doubt what happened. Rose took her mother's raw diary and prepared it for publication, and the product is the book On The Way Home, which tells of the journey Rose and her parents made in 1894, from DeSmet, South Dakota, setting for the final half of the Little House books, to the Ozark country, where the family would spend the next sixty years. The description is unsentimental, not glamorized (as it tends to be--for the sake of betterment--in the other books) and it paints a portrait of the difficult traveler's life on the by-then crowded prairie overrun with east-central European immigrants, many of whom being exactly the type portrayed in novels such as My Antonia. The Wilder family completes its draining re-location by covered wagon and arrives in Missouri, a state so much a promised land to them that a reader cannot help but share their relief when they safely arrive.

This book is written in a much different style than the other Little House books. Laura kept a journal of the trip and these are her day-to-day entries. It can sometimes be dry or confusing. I have been reading the series with my daughter and this one has been a little more difficult. We enjoyed it, but not as much as the others.