By the Shores of Silver Lake
Front dustjacket, first edition
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| Author | Laura Ingalls Wilder |
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| Illustrator |
Helen Sewell and Mildred Boyle Garth Williams (1953) |
| Country | United States |
| Series | Little House |
| Genre | Children's novel Family saga Western |
| Publisher | Harper & Brothers |
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Publication date
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October 20, 1939 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 260; 290 pp. |
| OCLC | 6932095 |
| LC Class | PZ7.W6461 By |
| Preceded by | On the Banks of Plum Creek |
| Followed by | The Long Winter |
By the Shores of Silver Lake is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1939, the fifth of nine books in her Little House series. The story spans just over one year, beginning when Laura is 12 years old and the family moves from Plum Creek, Minnesota to what will become De Smet, South Dakota.
Though Wilder began writing the books as autobiographical recollections, they are considered historical fiction. The enduring popularity of the Little House books has inspired additional book series encompassing more generations of Wilder's family as well as a long-running television series in the early 1970s that is still in syndication and available on DVD.
Silver Lake was a Newbery Honor book in 1940, as all the fourth to eighth Little House books were from 1938 to 1943.
By the Shores of Silver Lake is based on Laura's late childhood spent near De Smet, South Dakota, beginning in 1879. Because her sister Mary was recently blinded due to an illness, Pa asks Laura to "be Mary’s eyes" by describing what she sees, and Laura becomes more patient and mature through this service. The book also introduces Laura's youngest sister Grace Pearl.
The story begins in Plum Creek, shortly after the family has recovered from the scarlet fever which caused Mary to become blind. Aunt Docia comes to visit, and suggests that Pa works as the bookkeeper in Uncle Henry’s railroad camp for fifty dollars a month. Since Mary is too weak to travel, Pa goes ahead with the wagon and team, and the rest of the family follows later by train. The morning Pa is to leave, their beloved old bulldog Jack dies in his sleep, saddening Laura greatly. (The dog upon whom Jack was based was no longer with the family at that point, but the author inserted his death here to serve as a transition between her childhood and her adolescence.)
Several months later, the family travels to Dakota Territory by train. This is the family's first train trip and they are excited by the novelty of this newfangled mode of transportation, which can cover in a few hours the distance a horse and wagon would travel in a day. Pa comes for them in town, and the next day they leave for the railroad camp. Laura and her cousin, Lena, play together when they are done with their chores, which range from collecting laundry washed by a neighbor to milking cows; Laura rides a horse for the first time when Lena allows her the use of her pony. As winter approaches, the railroad workers take down the buildings in the camp and return east. As the family has nowhere to stay with the demolition of the camp, they plan to return east, but the surveyors, who had planned to stay for the winter, are called back east and ask the Ingalls to stay in their house in exchange for keeping watch over their surveying equipment.
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