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Ceridwen

Ceridwen

You kids get off my lawn. 

#BookADayUK Day Three: Best Home Front novel

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Ana Juan, Catherynne M. Valente Little House on the Prairie - Garth Williams, Laura Ingalls Wilder Pioneer Girl: The Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder - William Anderson, Dan Andreasen

Maybe it's just me, but this feels like a very British category of books. I just don't think Americans do novels from the home front so much. Certainly, that could be a mistaken impression owing to the fact that I tend to avoid war novels. The last honest to Jehovah one I read was probably A Separate Peace, about which I remember nothing. 

 

I guess I'd probably say The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Boat of Her Own Devising is my favorite home front novel, then. Papa's at war, and mama's at work, leaving 12 year old September to fall leftways outside over there. The novel is a nod to mid-War and mid-Century novels like Narnia and (maybe more arguably) Lord of the Rings, cut with some good old Americana like Wizard of Oz. (Narnia would work for this category, but -- and I know this is heresy -- I can take or leave the whole thing.) 

 

My wise-ass second choice would be Little House on the Prairie, in your home front of the Indian Wars category. That requires us to view the Western expansion as something quite different from Pa hugging Half-pint though. Oh, btw, a new memoir from Laura Engalls Wilder is being published soon, this one aimed at adults, and I'm pretty pumped about the whole thing. Check this:

 

The Associated Press reports, "The not-safe-for-children tales include stark scenes of domestic abuse, love triangles gone awry and a man who lit himself on fire while drunk off whiskey," adding, "Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, herself a well-known author, tried and failed to get an edited version of the autobiography published throughout the early 1930s." It will be published by the South Dakota State Historical Society Press.

 

Whe!