Review of By The Shores of Silver Lake

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Fourth Book in the Little House Series

Oct 16, 2008

By the Shores of Silver Lake is the fictionalized account of Laura Ingalls experiences in South Dakota during the expansion of the railroad.

By the time readers approach, By the Shores of Silver Lake, the fourth book in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s series of pioneer stories known as Little House on the Prairie Books, they are familiar with the Ingalls family and the dynamic tension between the homebodies Ma and Mary versus the wandering spirit of Pa and Laura. Still even when every fiber of Laura’s being calls her West she is, at heart, a lover of hearth and home.

The book opens with the exhausted and dirty caretakers Ma and Laura realizing that an approaching buggy was coming to visit their household. The entire family except for Laura and Pa are still recuperating from scarlet fever. Between illness, exhaustion, and poverty they are dirty, tired, and care little about their circumstances. Ma cares enough to ask what they could feed the company and Laura’s staunch reply is the same as we eat.

Hope can Always be Found out West

Soon, however, the arrival of Aunt Docia blows their indifference away. Aunt Docia promises Pa a job and an opportunity for a homestead in the Dakota territory if Pa will work on the railroad for her husband Hi. Laura and Pa succumb to the dream and excitement of going West. However, Ma voices legitimate concerns, including the slow recovery of Mary who lost her eyesight to the fever. But Pa cannot resist the promise of new land and plentiful wild game and he quickly accepts. As a result, the Ingalls make another move in their pioneering life.

Growing Up

The excitement of moving West is soon replaced for Laura by sorrow and the realization that going West would not be a return to her childhood when the adventure was hers but the responsibility was her parents. Before her father leaves to go on ahead of the family, Jack, the bulldog and Laura’s loyal companion, dies. Pa buries Jack and leaves and suddenly “Laura knew that she was not a little girl any more. Now she was alone; she must take care of herself. When you must do that, then you do it and you are grown up.”

Throughout the story, Laura learns more about what it means to be an adult, she becomes Mary’s eyes, she works hard helping provide nourishment for those moving West during the rush and thus earn money for the Ingalls, she becomes close friends with the young wife of her father’s friend Mr. Boast. As the seasons turn, Laura leaves childhood further and further behind. And yet she longs for the magic of childhood, which perhaps is why she and Carrie follow the moonpath and find themselves face to face with a pair of buffalo wolves. Young or old, Laura’s life never lacks for excitement.

No Place Like Home

Perhaps because she moved so often in her lifetime or perhaps because it was her inheritance from Ma, Laura always valued home and homely traditions. At the end of By the Shore of Silver Lake, Laura leaves us with Pa’s fiddle and the wistful yet reassuring lines: “Home! Home! Sweet, sweet home, / Be it ever so humble / There is no place like home.”

By the Shores of Silver Lake is for everyone who loves Laura Ingalls Wilder and enjoys the Little House on the Prairie series. It is also for those who appreciate the wistfulness and heartache that losing dreams and growing up engenders.

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