The Long Winter (novel)
Front dustjacket with Sewell illustration
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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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June 15, 1940 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 325; 334 pp. |
| ISBN | (lib. bdg.); 0060264608 |
| OCLC | 504334768 |
| LC Class | PZ7.W6461 Lo |
| Preceded by | By the Shores of Silver Lake |
| Followed by | Little Town on the Prairie |
The Long Winter is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1940, the sixth of nine books in her Little House series. The story is set in southeastern Dakota Territory during the severe winter of 1880–1881, when Laura turned 14 years old.
The Long Winter was one runner-up for the Newbery Medal in 1941, as all the fourth to eighth Little House books were from 1938 to 1943. In retrospect the five novels are called Newbery Honor Books.
On a hot August day in the 1880s, at the Ingalls homestead in Dakota Territory, Laura offers to help Pa stack hay to feed their stock in the winter. As they work, Laura notices a muskrat den in the nearby Big Slough. Upon inspecting the den, Pa notes that the walls are the thickest he has ever seen, and fears the upcoming winter will be a hard one.
In mid-October, the Ingallses wake to an unusually early blizzard howling around their poorly insulated claim shanty. Soon afterward, Pa receives another warning from an unexpected source: an old Native American man comes to the general store in town to warn the white settlers that there will be seven months of blizzards. Pa decides to move the family into his store building in town for the winter.
In town, Laura attends school with her younger sister, Carrie, until the weather becomes too unpredictable to permit them to walk to and from the school building, and coal too scarce to keep the school heated. Blizzard after blizzard sweeps through the town over the next few months. Food and fuel become scarce and expensive, as the town depends on trains to bring supplies but the frequent blizzards prevent the trains from getting through. Eventually, the railroad company suspends all efforts to dig out the trains that are snowed in at Tracy, stranding the town until spring.
With no more coal or wood, the family learns to use twisted hay for fuel. For weeks, the Ingallses subsist on potatoes and coarse brown bread made from wheat ground in their coffee mill. As even this meager food runs out, Laura's future husband Almanzo Wilder and his friend Cap Garland hear rumors that a settler raised wheat at a claim twenty miles from town. They risk their lives to bring sixty bushels of wheat to the starving townspeople – enough to last the rest of the winter.
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Wikipedia