The Long Winter audiobook

This place is a double Hell Hole, compared to Plum Creek and its crickets. No amount of Pa's fiddle-playing can compensate for the fact that they all almost died of hunger and cold during this winter. Remind me again, what was so bad about Big Woods in book one?

I would have died ten times over if I lived during Laura's timeThe whole family moves into town to weather the winter of 1800-1801 - and it's good thing they do. This was one of the harshest winters they would ever face. Snow soon piles over their windows and the bitter cold ensures that they cannot leave their houses. Their fuel runs out, their food consists of scraps, and Pa can no longer play the fiddle for his hands are stiff with cold.Even in her toughest year, faced with bitter cold and starvation, Laura still conveys the beauty of the prairie. Then the sun peeped over the edge of the prairie and the whole world glittered. Every tiniest thing glittered rosy toward the sun and pale blue toward the sky, and all along every blade of grass ran rainbow sparkles. We are introduced to Almanzo as an adult. (The first time since Farmer Boy.) Laura (in the story) admires him first for his horses, then for his kindness and then for his bravery as he hitches up his team of horses to make a run for fuel for the entire town. I appreciate that he remains as a background character. Their love plays out so slowly compared to many teen books that it has time to bloom and blossom.Wholesomely inspirational and heartwarming. An excellent book to read curled up under a blanket with a cup of cocoa. “It can't beat us!" Pa said."Can't it, Pa?" Laura asked stupidly."No," said Pa. "It's got to quit sometime and we don't. It can't lick us. We won't give up." Audiobook CommentsRead by Cherry Jones and accompanied by Paul Woodiel on the fiddle. Such an incredible audiobook.YouTube | Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat @miranda_reads

Eleanor and I just finished this up last night. A couple thoughts before she starts her review:I saw a facebook post not too long ago in which the person was opining that they didn't live in the "Little House days." This was in regard to Christmas. They mentioned how Laura and Mary et al received only one or two presents and were thrilled and grateful to receive them. You know, that was a "simpler time."Several days later, I saw that they were taking a trip to Disney for Christmas. And there were no shortage of packages under their tree.Not that I begrudge them going to Disney. I love that place. (Although, not as much as my sister... She takes it to a whole new level.)The Long Winter, though, makes it pretty clear that we're romanticizing those times. The times were simpler - if you equate simple with hunger, boredom, and intense manual labor.Not only that, but in certain circles, the Wilders are elevated to a Protestant sainthood. (Ok... most Protestant denominations already believe in the "sainthood of the believer," but lets set that aside for a moment.) The Wilder's are often put on a pedestal. That every decision they made was a right and moral one. (As they were living in right and moral times - as oppose to today's immoral, consumer-driven, drugged-out, gunned-out, society.)But throughout the book, I saw them as people - people who made mistakes in very, very difficult times. There was a mob-mentality at the store when they forced Loftus to "see reason" and sell the goods at a reasonable price. True, Loftus agreed - and he shouldn't have jacked the price up in the first place - but I'm not sure that justifies what the town was doing. Or stealing from the emigrant train car. "'I'm past caring what he ought to do!' Pa said savagely. 'Let the railroad stand some damages! This isn't the only family in town that's got nothing to eat. We told Woodworth to open up that car or we'd do it. He tried to argue that there'll be another train tomorrow, but we didn't feel like waiting...'"As a society, we can understand some forms of stealing - but that doesn't absolve the thief from the law.Consider too, that this is what Laura wrote. (She wouldn't have been writing all the faults of her father in a children's book.) No doubt, the Ingalls were great people - but they were people. They were struggling to survive. They did what they could with little complaining - and that is admirable. But they were people living in a difficult time, with their share of mistakes and sins. In that way, they are very similar to all of us.I have to look into getting Eleanor a goodreads account of her own. She's been sitting here patiently waiting for me to type up my part before she gets her say. She's got the patience of an Ingalls.Eleanor: I've been thinking about my favorite part.Dad: And did you come up with one?E: YEAH!D: What is it?E: My favorite part was when they made hay while the sun shines.D: Why was that your favorite part?E: Because it was before the winter, and it was so nice and warm outside the claim shanty, and they didn't move into the town yet, and it was just so warm in their house.D: So you didn't like the winter then?E: No. It was too cold. Heh. WAAAAAAAAYYYYYY to cold. Way way way way way way way too cold.D: So you didn't like most of the book then.E: Well, I like the book. I just didn't like that it was so cold for so long for them. Because we usually have winters from December to February.D: That's a good point.E: Can you put a smiley face at the end?D: Why?E: At the end of the sentence. BECAUSE I'M SMILING!!! :)D: Ok. I'll put it at the end of the sentence you just said. Tell me more about The Long Winter. What you'd think about it?E: Pretty good. They were shivering, and they couldn't feel their feet. And they were selling wheat.D: What was the book about?E: KITTY! It wasn't about the kitty. I just saw the kitty and it distracted me. It was about when they settled in town for the hard winter. They were cold. And every day they shivered. And they only had brown bread and potatoes. Sometimes they had cod-fish gravy. Laura and Pa were always twisting hay into sticks for the fire.D: Do you think it would be fun to live back then, or are you happy to live now?E: Ummmmm... Either way is ok.D: Why's that?E: Back then they didn't have electricity. But I wonder how that brown bread tastes, and I didn't have cod-fish gravy.D: You've had brown bread before.E: When?D: I think we have some downstairs right now. Although, I think it's softer than the bread Mary and Laura ate.E: Why?D: Because of the way it's made. ...So, if you had to choose - when would you live?E: Now.D: Me too. But, really, I think either would be ok.E: Me too.D: Should I put anything else in here?E: YEAH! THEN IT WAS SPRING AND THE CHINOOK WAS BLOWING!!!!D: I think that's the moral of the story.E: What's "moral" mean? The "end" of the story?D: No, it means the message, or the point of the story. It means, that sometimes times are tough. But spring, and the good times have to come eventually - if you can outlast the bad.

While this is not the most compelling Little House book it is a very important part of the story. I cannot imagine a bettercharacter building book. To live with the Ingalls through the long winter puts much of life's little frustrations in perspective. When Laura says, "For shame, Grace," after months and months of suffering, and little Grace utters the first and last complaint of the whole book, belies our own time and culture. No, it is not compelling to be confronted with one's own weaknesses, but this book is a vividly drawn picture of a life lived with gratefulness.

I've read this book many times. The most recent date is after I read it on Kindle for the first time. It's always been my favorite in the series. The reason I like it so much is that it shows how pioneers survived under extreme conditions, and how people and towns sacrificed for each other. It also describes Christmas as it should be: few gifts but lots of love and thankfulness. And the gifts they gave were given from self sacrifice and received with great appreciation. It wasn't about how much money you could spend. We have lost something in the age of technology and prosperity. This book reminds me of that.EDIT 7/7/20: My most recent reading of The Long Winter was an audiobook. Here is my review. This is my favorite Laura Ingalls Wilder book. It tells of the Ingalls struggles through a difficult winter where storms continued to hit and trains couldn’t get through. It captures the ingenuity and fortitude of the pioneers as they struggle to find food and heat their homes with blizzards raging outside and no supplies coming in. The narration by Cherry Jones is great. What I love about this performance is when the Ingalls are singing songs, the narrator actually sings them. And when Pa is playing the fiddle, there is real fiddle music. This is not just a beloved children’s series. It is American history, and a must read for anyone curious as to how the pioneers survived.

Updated: Read aloud to my boys October 2021-March 3, 2022. Perfect winter read and it took us all winter to get through it.😁Boys loved it and always asked for more. I think their favorite part was Pa building snow tunnels from the house to the barn. Great conversation topics throughout especially about starvation and how we have access to so much! We had so much fun making up tunes to Pa’s fiddle songs. We ended the book by marching around the kitchen singing the last song at the top of our lungs! Baby especially enjoyed that!😍 Perfect memories together!❤️2019 Read: Perfect nostalgic listen-to while I lay here in my weak and sickly state. It reminds me that my problems could be a lot worse, and to be thankful I’ve always had plenty to eat! This account is truly amazing; just when things seem they can’t get any worse, they do! It’s crazy to think of blizzards for 7 months, and the only way they knew was the Indian’s warning and the thickness of a muskrat house. We are blessed with all our weather viewings today. Man’s resilience and ability to endure was much stronger back then. I also enjoyed the music and fiddle songs brought with this audio although the narrator didn’t have a great singing voice!😆

Given the amount of snow we have on the ground right now and in the upcoming forecast, this story felt appropriate.It’s a tale of a bitter winter. Of making do and doing without. Of pulling together as a family. Of finding joy in the little things when little things were all you had. This is probably the darkest/most serious Little House book, and I had forgotten just how difficult things were. A small prairie town that faced food and heat shortages during perhaps the worst winter the region has ever seen and yet they were ingenious and resilient. It was literally a fight for survival with every page. I had also forgotten this was when Laura met her future husband Almonzo Wilder… So much beauty amid the darkness!

Ever since I first read this series at the age of 9 or so, THIS one stuck out in my memory as a favorite. It just seemed so much more REAL than the others, even if, yes, they are all REAL stories. The Long Winter was indeed that, with 7 months of blizzards nearly freezing and starving the Ingalls family to death. As a kid, I liked it for the adventure of it all, as an adult I like it for the sense of realism- they actually nearly died! Starving, eating crushed up wheat, burning sticks of horse's hay to live, it gives one a sense of how hard live truly could be during those times. Also, I love that ALMANZO is a majo player in this book, and I love the Cap Garland character as well. This is by far, my favorite of the series, with good reason, I think! -Jen from Quebec :0)

We live in troubled times. There is civil unrest and prejudice and unwarranted hatred plaguing our world, across borders and oceans and digital platforms. It’s easy to wish we could go back to simpler times, to an era where a man’s word was good and pollution was decades into the future. But I have to tell you: nothing and nobody and not any amount of money could convince me to travel back in time to trade lives with Laura Ingalls Wilder.. Nope. I love, no, I adore Little House on the Prairie. The television series from the 70s has been my happy place all summer. But as the series progresses and as I’ve gotten farther into the books, I’ve come to see the dark side of prairie life. Yes, this was a time before technology made our world smaller and gave us the anonymity to attack those who disagree with us with no concern about the consequences. It was a time when neighbors helped each other, and when man had room to breathe without the crowding that is so common today. But it was also a time of extreme hardship. If you found yourself facing a longer, harder winter than you anticipated, you could very possibly starve to death or freeze to death. If a train couldn’t get through with supplies, or if your crop hadn’t done as well as you hoped during the summer months, you could watch helplessly as your food and fuel stores dwindled down to nothing. Can you imagine watching your children starve and knowing there was nothing you could do? We live in a world where food can be delivered to our doorstep, where aid is much more easily attained for those who need financial assistance, where school lunches are provided for kids whose parents can’t afford them. We live in a land of plenty. Even though that same truth doesn’t stretch across the globe, there are people working on ensuring that no one, no matter where they live or how little they have, won’t have to go hungry. We have so much to be thankful for, and yet often we are so focused on the negatives that we forget to count our blessings. After reading this book, I’m thankful for so many things. I’m thankful for a well insulated house and a reliable furnace, and for a fire place and an unlimited amount of firewood should the power fail. I’m thankful for stocked cabinets and a full refrigerator and a freezer full of meat. I’m thankful for nonperishable food, for processed foods in cans and boxes and bags, even if I hope the day never comes when they’re all we have to eat. I’m thankful for my car and for paved roads. I’m thankful for grocery stores. I’m thankful that I will never have to endure the kind of winter that Laura and her family had to endure, and that starvation is incredibly unlikely unless I’m lost far away from home. Honestly, I’m just thankful.

I must have started and set aside a half-dozen books before I settled into The Long Winter. I'm finding it difficult to read in these uncertain times, but I saw Ruth recommending Long Winter on her blog A Great Book Study this week and I decided to give this book a try.I'm very glad I did. If you are feeling worried and anxious, The Long Winter is a good book to read.The Long Winter is the true story of the Ingalls family during a terrible season of blizzards that extended from October to late April. The Ingalls moved into town so they would have sturdy quarters as well as access to the supplies the train would bring through the winter. Deep into the winter, they learned the train would not be arriving, and there would be no new supplies. People were terribly worried as that would mean no way to stay warm and no food. Reading about the way the family and the community worked together to help each other was helpful for me. It was also useful to put our current crisis into perspective. And it was somehow reassuring to see that not everyone was able to act in ways that put the needs of the group ahead of the needs of the individual; this was no whitewashed version of the situation. This is historical fiction, and the attitudes and prejudices of the times are part of this story, so be prepared for that. But, in spite of these, The Long Winter is a good story for these times, I think. It reminds me that people have always faced terrible situations, and that we must work together to overcome them, putting the needs of the group before our own selfish interests.

Any time I start to feel like my life is horribly hard, I need to reread this book. Covid and lockdowns and cancelled plans and no vacations are hard, yeah... but I'm not watching my kids slowly starve. I'm not twisting hay into sticks to keep my house just warm enough so that my family can starve instead of freeze to death. I'm not facing down day after day of numbing misery while trying to keep the spirits of my children from faltering.I can barely imagine the kind of fortitude. I don't think anyone in this country really can anymore.I read this aloud to my husband and kids this fall. My husband has never read these books, and he's more engrossed in them than my kids are. That makes it extra fun for me as a reader :-)