It’s the birthday Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957, #nicelonglife), whose Little House books based on her memories of life as a pioneer girl have had a huge influence on American ideas about the frontier, contributing to what amounts to a mythology of the West.

Wilder was born in Lake Pepin, Wisconsin, where for fun she and her sister Mary would inflate the bladder of a pig once a year during pig butchering season and use it as a balloon, as I like to remind my children when they complain about not having enough toys. (I also like to mention the excitement of getting a tin cup and perhaps an orange at Christmas time. If I gave my children an orange for Christmas, they would call 911.) Wilder’s family traveled by covered wagon all over the American frontier—Minnesota, Kansas, Dakota Territory—and tried to make a go of homesteading but basically lived in poverty. Wilder started teaching in country schools at 15, married Almanzo Wilder at about 18, and several years later moved with him to a farm near Mansfield, Missouri, and spent the rest of her life there.

Wilder’s books cannot be read as autobiography; they are fictionalized, though they do draw heavily on her experiences. Wilder’s journalist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, was long thought by some to have ghostwritten the books for her mother, but Caroline Fraser, the author of a recent and critically acclaimed biography, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (2017), claims instead that “Wilder’s writing was both uniquely her own and a product of collaboration with her daughter.” Wilder didn’t start writing the Little House books until she was 62; she would draft them, and her daughter would heavily edit and shape them for dramatic effect. The books did well from the start.

One way in which the books are heavily fictionalized would be the emphasis given on Charles Ingalls’ independence and resourcefulness over the dubious and risky decisions he constantly made that were partially responsible for the family’s poverty. Wilder never wrote about the time when they were living in Iowa and her father had the family leave town in the middle of the night because they couldn’t pay their debts. Still, Fraser in Prairie Fires evidently maintains a great respect for Wilder, her books, and the powerful world they create.

If by some chance you haven’t read the Little House books, you could do far worse than start with Farmer Boy, based on Almanzo Wilder’s boyhood in New York state; it has the funniest stories and the most mouth-watering descriptions of food. (Just my humble opinion, but I’m from Dakota Territory myself, so I was raised on the Little House books. Actually, pro tip: never say “Dakota Territory” to someone from South Dakota.) Also wonderful is The Long Winter, which I recommend reading with the heat cranked up and a heated throw on your lap.

Have a fantastic Thursday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.