The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Why read the book?

The First Four Years picks up right where These Happy Golden Years ends. Laura and Almanzo are married and trying to make their homestead work. Laura agrees to try farming for three years, and if it does not work out they will do something else.

But farming is harder than they ever imagined. Crops fail, hail destroys the wheat, they both get very sick with diphtheria, and their house burns down. Their daughter Rose is born and brings them joy in the middle of all the trouble. The book feels different from the others because it was never fully finished by Laura. It is rougher and more honest about how hard life really was.

Favourite quote

It would be a fight to win out in this country, but strangely she felt her courage rising.

What I Loved

This book was sad in many places. So many bad things happened to Laura and Almanzo. The crops failed year after year and they kept losing money. Almanzo got sick and his feet were damaged so he could never walk properly again. Then the house burned down with everything in it.

But what I loved was that they never gave up on each other. Even when everything went wrong they stuck together. Little Rose was a bright spot in all the darkness. The book is not as polished as the others because Laura never finished editing it, but that makes it feel more real somehow. You can feel that she wrote it from the heart.

Key Takeaway

Marriage means staying together through the hardest times, not just the happy ones.

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