A Wilder Rose: A Novel (18 page)

“A stunning piece of work,” Mary Margaret burbled. “And a perfect ending. So good to read something optimistic when everybody is so down in the mouth!”

I was in New York on Election Day. Franklin Delano Roosevelt won in a landslide, carrying forty-two out of forty-eight states, the first Democrat since Franklin Pierce to win a majority of the popular vote. People were understandably nervous about Roosevelt’s vague policy positions (What was a “New Deal”? What would he do about the banking situation?) and his health (Could the man
really
walk? Could he stand up to the demands of the office?).

But they were ready to vote for anyone but Hoover. The president had become the scapegoat who bore the blame for the Depression, the butt of everyone’s bad jokes—and worse. When his campaign train pulled into Detroit, the crowd was waiting with eggs and rotten tomatoes, chanting, “Hang Hoover! Hang Hoover!” Even staunchly Republican Mansfield would turn against him, giving Roosevelt 362 votes to Hoover’s 303.

Roosevelt was at the Biltmore on election night, and newspaper reporters were camped in the hotel lobby, anxious to hear the election returns as they came in. When Genevieve and I went out to supper, the streets in her neighborhood were filled with the swingy sound of “Happy Days Are Here Again,” blaring from hundreds of radios in hundreds of windows. And it wasn’t the
New York Times
that scooped the announcement of Roosevelt’s win. Shortly after eleven p.m., Americans heard the news on their radios, everyone everywhere, all at the same time. For this former newspaper reporter who had a lifelong reverence for print, the radio broadcast seemed to mark the end of an era. We were living in a brave new world. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it.

I took the train back to Mansfield, then collapsed into bed with a bad case of the flu. On Christmas Eve, family and a few friends gathered around the tree at Rocky Ridge and exchanged ten-cent presents. For Christmas dinner, Lucille baked a turkey with all the trimmings, and Mama Bess brought a mincemeat pie.

When the party was over, I went back to bed for the rest of the year.

It was late January when my mother gave me her new version of
Farmer Boy
. It had been raining for several days. The creek was up, the roads were muddy, and the sky was an unrelieved leaden gray. Catharine, who had come after Christmas to stay for several months, was in her room upstairs, having an afternoon nap. I was in the living room beside the fire, doing a pen revision of “Vengeance,” which the
Country Gentleman
had rejected as “too grim” and which I wanted to send out again. I had brought in a tea tray and set it on the low table, thinking that Catharine might be coming down soon.

I laid my work aside when my mother came into the room. She put a stack of orange-covered notebooks on the table beside my chair. “I’m happy to tell you that I got a check from George Bye for five hundred sixty-two dollars and sixty-nine cents,” she said. “Royalties for
Little House
.”

I was stunned. I had never imagined that the book would see that large a sale. “That’s wonderful, Mama Bess!” I exclaimed, delighted. “Congratulations! You must feel just grand.”

“I do,” she said modestly. “And I just this morning finished rewriting
Farmer Boy.
It’s ready for you to work on.”

“Good,” I said. “I hope the rewrite wasn’t too difficult.” I got up and poured a cup of tea for her. There were cinnamon rolls on the tea tray, but she shook her head when I offered one.

“Well, I took out those things that Miss Raymond didn’t like,” she said, sitting down on the sofa. “And I used the notes from your trip to expand the descriptions of the farm and the buildings and such.” She stirred sugar into her cup, not looking at me. “I’ve done the best I could, but it’ll likely need a lot of fixing. I want you to do what you have to do so that Miss Raymond will take it, Rose.”

I looked directly at her and asked, “You’re sure?”

She nodded. “I’ll come over every couple of days and you can show me what you’ve changed and tell me why you did it.” She pursed her lips. “A person is never too old to learn, as Ma used to say.” I murmured something and she added, “And, of course, I want to learn as much as I can from you. I’m hoping I’ll improve so much that all you have to do with the next one is type it.”

I poured myself another cup of tea. The Harper contract specified three books, so she felt she was obligated to write a third. At least,
she
felt obligated—Harper wouldn’t. There was no guarantee that they would accept a third book if the sales of
Farmer Boy
didn’t meet expectations. Come to that, there was no guarantee that they would accept a rewritten
Farmer Boy
, especially given the economic uncertainty. It would be very easy for them to reject it and cancel the contract. I doubted that my mother was thinking of this, and it wasn’t a good idea to say anything that might undercut her confidence as she began work on her third—and perhaps her last—book.

“While you’re doing that, I need to start working,” she went on. “It takes me so long to write anything because I never know where I’m going. I just have to let the story wander around until it begins to lead somewhere.”

I stirred the fire and the coals blazed up. “I’m glad to hear that you’re ready to get started. Have you figured out what you’re going to write about?” We had talked about this before. If she went on writing, it would be easiest for her to use the story material in “Pioneer Girl” as a kind of outline.

“I suppose it should be the Indian Territory story.” She sounded uncertain. “But the books will be out of order. I don’t quite know how to handle that.”

“Out of order?” I added another oak log to the fire and sat down with my cup of tea.

“Well, I didn’t start ‘Pioneer Girl’ in Wisconsin because I wasn’t old enough to remember the first time we lived there, and I didn’t include the time we spent in Missouri. I started ‘Pioneer Girl’ in Indian Territory, which I don’t exactly remember either, except through Ma and Pa’s stories.” She added sugar to her tea and stirred. “I was only a year and a half when we went there. And three and a half when we started back to the Big Woods.”

The Ingalls family itinerary was complicated. My mother was born in northwestern Wisconsin. When she was still a toddler, her father and mother packed up their family (my mother and her older sister, Mary) and headed for Indian Territory, for what my grandfather thought would soon be free land, opened up for settlement. He wanted to get a jump on the others who would be flocking to stake their claims. They lived there for a year and a half—that’s where my mother’s sister Carrie was born. Then they traveled back to my mother’s birthplace in Wisconsin, where they lived for another three years.

Mama Bess put her spoon in the saucer. “But you see, that’s not the way it seems in
Little House in the Big Woods.
In that book, I’m already four, and it seems like we’ve lived in Wisconsin ever since I was born. And Carrie is a baby. So writing about Indian Territory, where Carrie is born, is going backward.”

I nodded, seeing her dilemma. “Just ignore the issue,” I said. “Pretend that the second stay in Wisconsin was the first and go on with the story in Indian Territory.”

“But I can’t pretend,” she protested, frowning. “That’s fiction, Rose. That’s what you write. I want my books to be the
truth.
” Her frown deepened. “But it’s awkward. I just don’t know what to do about Carrie.”

“I’m sure you’ll come up with something that feels right,” I said. Time enough to discuss it later, when she had produced her manuscript.

I heard footsteps overhead. Catharine was getting up. My mother glanced toward the stairs, then drained her teacup and set it down. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” she began in a low voice, “but—”

“If it’s about Catharine, please don’t.”

Another frown. “But I really think you should know that she is being talked about, Rose. She was seen exchanging pleasantries with one of the traveling salesmen in front of the pool hall.”

Uh-oh,
I thought. Growing up in Mansfield, I had been told that traveling men were bold and bad. Nice girls weren’t supposed to speak to them, and if a girl did, well, she wasn’t nice. Since the crash, the number of salesmen had dramatically decreased, but they still occasionally came through town. The Mrs. Grundys of Mansfield might go to the movies and listen to the radio, but their view of traveling men was apparently unchanged. And while the Catharine I knew was friendly but hardly flirtatious, even a polite hello-it’s-a-lovely-day would be enough to set them off.

My mother leaned forward, very serious. “You know I don’t make moral judgments. But other people do, and their opinions of Catharine rub off on our family. On you, Rose. On me.”

I was exasperated. “You can’t be serious, Mama Bess. Why would people associate you with what Catharine does? And why in the world would anyone object to a simple exchange of pleasantries on the sidewalk? Surely nobody thinks she’s going to run off with the fellow.”

But I was fighting a losing battle. My mother’s compass swung to the poles of her friends’ opinions. And of all my New York visitors, Catharine was the sort of “new woman” who made the Mansfield matrons uncomfortable, armored as they were in their narrow morality. Her makeup and tight skirts had already attracted their scrutiny. Anything she said or did would serve as a subject for tittle-tattle until a new scandal came along to keep their tongues busy.

“You mark my words, Rose.” My mother gave her head an ominous shake. “That girl is going to come to no good end.”

“Yes, Mama,” I said dutifully.

Catharine was clattering down the stairs. My mother stood. “I must be on my way.” She glanced at the stack of tablets and her face softened. “About
Farmer Boy
—I’m sorry I didn’t let you do the revisions you wanted to do before I sent it in the first time, Rose. That would have saved us both some extra work.”

It was a remarkable moment.

I had planned to start another story after I finished revising “Vengeance,” but I put the idea aside and went to work on
Farmer Boy.
My mother had taken out most of the digressive material, added a few descriptions, and revised some of the chapters. But there was still a great deal to be done, and I worked on it for the whole month of February. This time, I had the freedom to add the dialogue and detail that would make the story interesting to a young reader. And since I had visited the Wilder farm and had seen the places, I could describe the settings with authority.

On March 2, I finished the manuscript and handed it over. I knew it was good, and Mama Bess must have agreed because she promptly sent it off to George Bye with the cover letter I composed for her. Two weeks later, Harper accepted it, but offered only a 5 percent royalty rate, half what
Little House
was earning.

I wrote right away to George Bye, protesting that the reduction in my mother’s royalty was a dangerous precedent, especially since she felt she was obligated for a third book. Beating the drum for her, I wrote to Bye that she was already working on that book, an Indian story that promised to be even better than
Little House.
Bye carried my concern to Miss Raymond and reported her reply. The juvenile market, she said, was at a very low ebb
.
She was willing to make an adjustment—5 percent royalty up to three thousand copies, 10 percent after that—but it was the best that she could do. In the end, I had to tell my mother that she was probably lucky that Harper was willing to bring the book out, given the current economic catastrophe. She signed the contract.
Farmer Boy
would be published in the fall.

And the economic situation really was a catastrophe, the terrible reports filling every newspaper and radio broadcast. The crash itself had been bad, and the weeks and months that followed had been worse. But the months between Roosevelt’s November election and his March 4 inauguration were horrible beyond description, with banks closing all across the country. Everyone was desperate for change, but what would the new president do? What
could
he do? Would anything make a difference?