Wendy McClure on "The Wilder Life"

Author Wendy McClure immersed herself in the Ingalls Wilder mythos. (The Capital Times, 5/5/2011)

Excerpt:  In the almost 80 years since Laura Ingalls Wilder published her first book, “Little House in the Big Woods” in 1932, the factual and fictional accounts of Ingalls Wilder’s life have made their way into the fabric of our popular culture. McClure’s recently published memoir, “The Wilder Life,” explores her pilgrimage to find her way back to “Laura World” — “a world almost as self-contained and mystical as Narnia or Oz” — that was at the center of her childhood.

McClure’s fascination with Laura World began when she was a little girl in Oak Park, Ill., reading paperback editions of the Little House series that she picked up from the public library. As childhood passions tend to do, McClure’s fascination faded as she grew up. “Eventually I would love other books,” she writes. “I’d swoon through my lit classes, major in English, collect thin books of poetry, feel very close to Margaret Atwood and Elizabeth Bishop. But only with the Little House series was I ever truly a fan, with wide swaths of my imagination devoted to the prairies of Laura World.”