Caroline

This novel reimagines Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie from the perspective of Caroline Ingalls, the wife and mother at the center of the family's westward journey. Set in 1870, the narrative follows Caroline from Wisconsin to the Kansas prairie and back, charting her inner life amid the dangers, sacrifices, and revelations of frontier migration.

Charles Ingalls, Caroline's husband, announces that their neighbor Gustafson has agreed to buy the family's homestead near Pepin, Wisconsin, for just over a thousand dollars. Charles plans to preempt 160 acres in Kansas, in territory set aside for Native peoples, where land costs $1.25 per acre. Preemption allows settlers to claim legal ownership by settling on and improving public land before formally purchasing it. Caroline is torn between apprehension at leaving her extended family and excitement at the prospect of land entirely their own. She reveals that she is pregnant, expecting before harvest. When Charles offers to wait, she decides it is better to leave now.

Caroline packs her most treasured possessions, including a china shepherdess figurine, her wedding quilt, and a delaine dress with strawberry-shaped buttons. She sews a double-thick wagon cover while managing the household and her two daughters, five-year-old Mary and three-year-old Laura. At the urging of the Richards brothers, local storekeepers in Pepin, Charles purchases a Colt revolver, and Caroline learns to load and fire it. On the morning of departure, both families gather to say goodbye, and the wagon lurches forward.

The family crosses frozen Lake Pepin, where the horses lose traction and the wagon stalls. The horses eventually find footing, but that night the sound of ice cracking on the lake makes the distance back feel permanent. Weeks of overland travel follow through Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri. Caroline manages morning sickness, cooks over erratic campfires, and worries about the unborn child, which has not yet begun to move. She dreads the question of who will attend her birth with no midwife or family nearby. When she asks Charles to describe their future home, he conjures a small log house with a fireplace and calico curtains, and Caroline seizes on this vision as a mental anchor.

They cross the Missouri River by ferry into Kansas. A violent storm strikes almost immediately, soaking provisions and miring the wagon in mud for over a week. A settler named Jacobs trades his matched pair of black mustang ponies for the Ingalls's draft horses, and a brindle bulldog named Jack comes with the trade. The open prairie overwhelms Caroline. She recognizes that the landscape feeds Charles's restless spirit in a way Wisconsin never could, but she also perceives what the treeless expanse lacks: churches, schools, and community. She insists that Charles promise all their children will receive a formal education, and he agrees.

At a dangerously swollen creek, a surge of water lifts the wagon and sweeps the horses off their feet. Charles leaps in and vanishes before resurfacing to cling to one of the horses. Caroline takes the reins and steadies the panicked team until they reach shore. Jack is lost in the crossing but reappears that evening, having crawled through the tall grass to find the family.

Charles selects a homesite and begins building a cabin. A log falls on Caroline's ankle, immobilizing her for days. A bachelor neighbor named Edwards volunteers to help raise the walls. Caroline unpacks her china shepherdess and places it on the mantel shelf. While Charles is away hunting, two Osage men, members of the Native nation whose lands surround the homestead, enter the cabin uninvited. They take cornmeal and gesture for Caroline to bake it. She is terrified, unable to see or hear the girls, who burst inside moments later. Charles dismisses her fear, insisting they must maintain good relations, and builds a provisions cupboard with a padlock. Caroline wears the key hidden beneath her corset.

Charles nearly dies when he descends into the half-dug well to rescue Mr. Scott, a neighbor who collapsed from toxic gas at the bottom. Caroline cranks the windlass, using the leverage of her pregnant body, and hauls both men to the surface. When Caroline's labor begins one summer morning, Mrs. Scott, Mr. Scott's wife, arrives to attend the birth. They sing hymns through the contractions, and the baby, a girl, is born safely. Caroline names her Caroline Celestia, Carrie for short, the middle name inspired by a night when Laura said the stars were singing and Caroline first felt the baby move. Charles presents Caroline with a cake of rose-scented soap he secretly purchased months earlier.

The entire family falls ill with fever and ague, a recurring illness marked by fever and chills. Caroline is the last to succumb, and for days the household lies helpless. Dr. Tann, a Black doctor who treats settlers and Native people across the county, discovers them after Jack blocks his path on the road. Mrs. Scott nurses the family back to health. The quinine prescribed to treat the illness passes through Caroline's milk, making it so bitter that Carrie refuses to feed. During his convalescence, Charles weaves Caroline a rocking chair from willow boughs. The chair fits her body perfectly, evidence of years of devoted attention.

When Charles travels to Oswego for supplies, Caroline spends four nights alone with the children and a loaded revolver. He returns with provisions and eight panes of window glass, an extravagant purchase that gives Caroline light and a view all winter. Two aggressive Osage men later enter the cabin, searching for the key to the provisions cupboard and nearly taking the family's valuable pelts. Caroline rises in silent, fierce refusal, and they leave. For several predawn mornings, eerie wailing rises from the Osage camps. Edwards and Scott report that the Osages have agreed to sell their lands but that federal troops have been called to protect them, not the settlers.

On Christmas Eve, Edwards wades the flooded creek to bring gifts for the girls and letters from home. Caroline reads in the family circulator, a letter passed among relatives, that her sister Eliza has had a baby boy. The day becomes the richest Christmas she has ever known. Through the winter, Charles traps while Caroline tans hides. In spring, he trades furs for a steel plow.

When a prairie fire sweeps toward the homestead, Charles plows a furrow around the house and lights a backfire. Caroline beats out flames with wet burlap sacks until the fire splits and passes, scorching only the trim on her new dress. The Osage procession later passes through the dooryard as the tribe departs for a reservation to the south. Laura becomes hysterical, begging for the black-eyed Indian baby she sees in a basket on a pony. After the procession passes, Caroline sits on the doorstep feeling strangely empty.

A letter arrives: Gustafson has defaulted on his payments. With only $31 remaining, the family cannot prove up on their claim; they lack the funds to meet the legal requirements for keeping the land. Charles announces they must return to Wisconsin. Caroline packs the wagon, pausing to water her garden one last time and dig up seedlings. She presents the plants to Edwards, telling him they will stand a much better chance in his care and that he has been as fine a neighbor as they will ever have. Charles leaves the latch string out so someone in need of shelter might enter. That evening, Charles plays his fiddle. The four tuning notes carry Caroline through every memory of the journey. She places one hand around her waist and the other over her breast, and thinks: "Here. Home."