On the Banks of the Bayou

Little House: The Rose Years #7

by Roger Lea MacBride, Dan Andreasen (Illustrator)

The seventh book in the Rose Years series, the story of the spirited daughter of the author of the beloved Little House series.

A whole new world opens up for Rose Wilder when she leaves Rocky Ridge Farm and moves to Louisiana to live with her aunt Eliza Jane. Rose is sixteen now, and she thrives in a city brimming with excitement and adventure. Rose even finds herself becoming an independent young woman with her own ideas, ambitions, and dreams.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Childrens, Fiction, Classics, Historical, Young Adult, Middle Grade

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

MacBride called himself "the adopted grandson" of writer and political theorist Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of writer Laura Ingalls Wilder, and as such laid claim to the substantial Ingalls-Wilder's literary estate, including the "Little House on the Prairie" franchise. He is the author of record of three additional "Little House" books, and began the "Rocky Ridge Years" series, describing the Ozark childhood of Rose Wilder Lane. He also co-produced the 1970s television series Little House on the Prairie.

Controversy came after MacBride's death in 1995, when the local library in Mansfield, Missouri, contended that Wilder's original will gave her daughter ownership of the literary estate for her lifetime only, all rights to revert to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Library after her death. The ensuing court case was settled in an undisclosed manner, but MacBride's heirs retained the rights.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ma...

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the 7th book in the Rose years. I must say that I do love all the five generations of Laura but Rose is my least favorite. She begins to become selfish and thinking too highly of herself. She moves to Crowley, Louisiana to get more education at their high school. She stays with her Aunt Eliza Jane who gets Rose involved in women's suffrage and becomes a socialist. She does very well in her school studies. She managed to complete 3 years worth of Latin in one year. But she becomes almost too sure that she is the best at her studies and it kind of annoyed me. Rose starts to get courted by an older man even though she knows that "her heart belongs to Paul" and the man is going to be leaving in a couple of months. She felt that she deserved to have some fun with a boy. In some ways Rose is still the headstrong girl she was like when she was younger. She stands firmly in her beliefs about the workings of the common man and the problems with women's rights. But at the end of the book Rose is dreading going back to the small city of Mansfield and her farm. I'm dissapointed that Rose can't see the beauty in the world and the simple things on a farm like Laura does.

[Dafne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to write a review because I found other people's reviews so insufferable! Rose Wilder is an incredibly smart, ambitious, and talented woman who goes on to lead an incredible life, especially for her time and especially considering her modest upbringing. This book tells of a time when that fascinating life gets its jumpstart. Away from home for the first time, Rose finally gets to experience the wider world. She sees people of colour regularly, she learns more about inequities in her world, and she starts to learn more about life outside of the bubble she grew up in. This is my favourite book in the series, and I do find Rose to be much more fascinating than her mother simply because she is more bold and more willing to take risks. I also find it interesting that the books speak so much about socialism - and present it in such a bright light - considering the author was a member of the Libertarian party. If you read more about Rose later, she was a staunch socialist until a trip to Europe and the Soviet Union turned her the other way. It is incredibly selfless and brave for Mr. MacBride to have written so honestly about Rose's views on socialism at this time in her life even while he himself disagreed with this political theory.

If you just want a book series about a good girl who does what she is supposed to all the time and then gets married and raises another good girl, the Caroline years exist and they are really sweet (though certainly much more fictitious than the Laura or Rose years). If, however, you want to learn more about the excitement and massive social and technological changes that occurred in the early 20th century, the Rose years are an amazing history lesson. I just can't believe so many review writers here would have rather seen Rose abandon her education and just settle down and live the same life her Mom and her mom's Mom did. You do realize that Rose encouraged her Mom to write the Little House books, right? And that if she hadn't gone out and been a globe-trotting writer she might never have even thought to suggest the idea to her Mom? The Rose years are the reason Little House exists in the first place and I am disgusted that so many of you shun an independent thinking woman.

[Joni Rupnow · Rating 2 out of 5]

It gets harder to keep liking Rose. Her world broadens but she seems to become more shallow. The basic story is neat but all of her thoughts and feelings are not likable.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a little slow moving at the beginning, but it wasn't too hard to get into the story.
I feel like a lot of people either love or hate this book, and there's rarely an in between, but I'd say I'm on the fence for this one.
While I don't agree with all of Rose's feminist views I do find her story interesting and have enjoyed rediscovering this series from my childhood. There are honestly so many things I forgot about and so many things that just brought back floods of memories. :)
I hope to read the next book in the series.
I'd recommend to any history, Rose Wilder loving girls ages 12+

[Bart Everson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had low expectations for this book. At first glance, it looked like an attempt to cash in on the literary legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I knew Rose Wilder was a prominent writer herself, in her day, and that her early success actually paved the way for her mother. But while this book is about Rose, it is not in fact written by her, but by Roger Lea MacBride, who was practically like an adopted grandson to her. To top it off, he died before finishing this book and it was published posthumously by his heir. Indeed, the only reason I read it at all was because of the local connection to the state where we live: this book is about how Rose Wilder goes to high school in Crowley, Louisiana.

Surprise! It's actually quite good. I was especially impressed that the story does not evade the realities of racial injustice in the early 20th century in the Deep South. We see Rose's early political awakening here. She is a passionate advocate for women's suffrage. The presidential candidacy of the famous socialist Eugene Debs figures in as well. But I think my favorite passages were those regarding the innovation of the "destroyer of distance": the telephone.

I haven't read any other books in this series but now I kind of want to.

[Ashley Perham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, this is where it goes downhill, at least in my opinion. You see, Rose moves away and starts to learn Latin and do all this cool stuff and meets this awesome Acadian family (probably my favorite part of the book), but then she gets politically active in socialism and courts another dude? What? Also, I wished we could have seen more of her at school :(
Anywho, I'm not mad that Rose got politically active and I admire her for standing up for what she believes, but because I very strongly disagree with her stance (except for women's rights), I feel like I don't connect to her as much. This is probably just me, and I'm currently wrestling with whether your opinion of a character should be influenced by politics. Also, she was a little pushy about the whole thing too. It was interesting to see the issue from a Socialist's viewpoint though.

I don't know, Rose just seemed to change. A LOT. And why was she even hanging out with that dude after everything that happened with the salesman!! Really!!! I guess her whole attitude was sort of off-putting. This is still a good book, I just don't like Rose as much as I used to.

[☆☆Hannah☆☆ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will admit that as this series is going along I'm liking Rose less and less. She is trying to hard to be different and therefore she is losing site of who she really is. In this book Rose takes off to live with her aunt in Tennessee. Where she is attending a school there. Of course she graduates with honors. I swear for someone as smart as her she makes some dumb choices. I just hope the ending to this series won't be too disappointing.

[Heidi-Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before I read this series, I had always wondered how Rose ended up as she did, so different from her mother and in my eyes quite worldly. Throughout the series, I wondered even more how this change took place. This book starts to reveal those changes and I have to admit I was very disappointed in Rose.

[Leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was okay, but I don't really like Rose. I like the series about her mom, Laura, a lot more. The descriptions of the different places that Rose went were interesting. Also, I liked Odile and her family. The chapters with them were the best thing about this book.

[Melinda · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book sadly should be called "The Selfish Years". Somehow in comparing the attitude Laura Ingalls had when she was in her teens with the attitude her daughter has in this book, leaves Rose looking pretty poorly. Yes, Laura had moments of selfishness and anger and frustration. She records them pretty faithfully. But this book did very little to make Rose more interesting.

I know that Rose did not write these, and the stories she told to Roger Lea MacBride have the advantage of being published after the people in the books are long dead.

One interesting note, I found that Paul Cooley, Rose's very good childhood friend and (at least in the books) almost fiancee, was a real person. I found his grave at find-a-grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/1...

[Jerianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rose Wilder goes to live with her aunt Eliza Jane for a school year to go to a new High School in Louisiana. She experiences living away from home for the first time, learning new languages, becoming a socialist and a women's rights advocate, dating, etc. It's an interesting turn-of-the-century coming-of-age book.
This is my least favorite of the Rose books. If it didn't really reflect her life, I'd be a little ticked off at the author. I'm just a little ticked off at Rose instead. To each her own, I guess. Socialism? Really? Laura must have laid an egg.

[Deevena Jemima · Rating 5 out of 5]

I seem to be flying through these series. In this book, Rose leaves her parents to go to High School in Louisiana. She stays with her Aunt E.J and her little cousin Wilder. On the first day she realizes that Latin is a compulsory subject there; this throws her into a panic as she had never learned the language before. But guess what? She sticks to it and comes out with flying colors at the end of the term. She is taken up with the women's suffrage movement and is very vocal about her beliefs, something that doesn't sit very well with the school authorities. However, she manages to outwit them with a poem in Latin talking about those issues. Oh, and she learns French too.

[Sherry Sidwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a review that by necessity must be full of caveats. If you're just looking for a continuation of the Little House books for a budding reader, they're very much in the same vein in the day to day of not quite subsistence farming and not bad at all. But if you've read Caroline Fraser's excellent Prairie Fires about the lives and mythmaking of both Laura Ingalls Wilder and daughter Rose Wilder Lane, you quickly realize this series like the original is a lot of romanticized and highly fictionalized nonsense that could at times be quite hamfisted into trying to further both women's own extreme politics and idealizing the heroic settler pioneer. Worse, they're written by someone who never knew Laura at all and because of Rose's decidedly odd proclivities in "adopting" various young men until they no longer suited her, lucked into getting control of the entire Wilder estate and copyrights.

This seventh entry in the series a huge departure from its predecessors. Rose has gone to stay with her aunt, Eliza Jane, best immortalized in Little Town on the Prairie, in Louisiana to get the high school education she can't get back home in the tiny town she's fast outgrowing. Rose isn't a kid anymore, getting dragged into women's suffrage and socialist politics.

[DW · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sixteen-year-old Rose travels to Crowley, Louisiana to live with her Aunt E. J., a widow, and attend one year of high school. I'm a little puzzled when and why Eliza Jane from the Little House books (not just Farmer Boy, but also Little Town on the Prairie) started to go by E. J. I'm also puzzled where Almanzo's brother Perley and sister Laura came from. I thought in Farmer Boy Almanzo was the youngest and he was about nine? Maybe his family was simplified for the book. And now that I think about it, Almanzo called Laura "Bess" because he already had a sister Laura.

I liked reading how Rose reacted to being in a city after growing up on the farm. The Little House books paint rural life as wholesome and wonderful, but Rose felt ashamed of her roots and eagerly embraced city life. I wonder if the difference in attitude is because Laura always had sisters as company, because Laura was more of a homebody than Rose, or if it was just that times were changing. Rose was quite the spitfire. When the Principal asks her how she liked her teachers, she answers frankly, "Not very well." Then she decides to be valedictorian with the highest Latin grade, out of spite. Then she subversively slips a socialist message into her valedictory poem by writing it in alternating Latin lines. This is not to mention keeping company with Mr. Skidmore.

My favorite story is when Mr. McCarthy gets their maid, Viola, kicked out of town for rejecting his advances. E. J. starts stopping by Mr. McCarthy's office and leaving him writings, for instance a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, or Bible verses. Finally Mr. McCarthy agrees to let Viola return. I'm surprised the tactic worked. To quote Laura's Ma: Patience will wear out a stone.

I also loved the French-speaking Catholic Odile Boudreaux, who works in her father's bakery and has siblings Oliver, Octave, Onesia, Ovide, Ophelia, Olivia, Opta, Odalia, Odelia, Olite, Otta, and Omea. !!! Thirteen!!!

[Rae Bates · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many others I was disappointed in some of the choices Rose made and attitudes she adopted. But I think it represents a lot of the changes that came at the turn of the century. Rose was a product of her time much as Laura was. This is a good addition to the series. And I think it could lead to as many good discussions of what is good, proper, and right as any of the books in the “Little House” series.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't like this one as much as the previous books--probably because of all the pages spent on politics of the time. Also, the author had Rose behaving exceedingly urban for someone just off the farm and dealing with a big city. She seemed out of character. Ah well, on to book #8!

[Stasia · Rating 3 out of 5]

*Sighs because Rose is just not Laura.*

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

We’ve moved onto the penultimate book in the series. The same introduction has been used by the author’s daughter, with a couple of minor changes per book, since book 5.

The last two books are considerably shorter than the earlier books at 232 and 243 pages respectively. So they are easy and short reads, but I feel like they could have easily been condensed into one book.

This book starts with Rose travelling from Missouri to Louisiana to go to high school - a distance which I worked out to be a bit over 500 miles, if I have got my geography correct, to stay with “EJ” (Eliza Jane). Such a distance to go to high school! She meets her first coloured person, and also has to learn French and Latin. (Rather her than me.)

She also forgets about her poor parents and poor Paul. The brattiness and attitude that I felt was such a departure from the previous books has all but disappeared in this book. Apart from Rose’s sheer pigheadedness to learn three years of Latin in one year.

She also meets a new beau, who she “steps out” with and goes on buggy rides with. Annoyingly, he is only ever referred to as Mr Skidmore. The man did not have a first name, or at least to me, it wasn’t obvious. That’s like calling a prospective beau these days Mr Smith or Mr Watson. The mind boggles. (And the poor men in those days must have had a severe case of blue balls.)

EJ is also involved in a lot of the socialism and suffrage of the early 1900s, in parts which dragged down the book’s pace and ropes Rose into it as well. Personally, I didn’t find it fit in the book, considering how fast paced the previous book was, but I suppose it has to reflect the time period that it was set in, and this was possibly something that Rose had been involved in. (Although since discovering that she never married Paul in real life, I’m taking everything with a pinch of salt now.)

Overall, I think I’ll be glad to see the end of this series. I still haven’t looked up the Charlotte or Martha books, considering how difficult I found it getting my hands on the Caroline books. If you can grab these, and fancy losing yourself to a different time period for some light holiday reading, these are your books.

[Jaime K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rose is 16 and goes to live with her aunt Eliza Jane in Louisiana for a year. It's kind of great to see how EJ's demeanor has changed since she was Laura's teacher, but she's still a headstrong whirlwind of activity.

And Rose just becomes even more of a loose cannon, going out with older men, eavesdropping on conversations, doing things she knew would pretty much be spiteful to her mother...
I said it in a previous review, but geez, it's no wonder that she was part of the Wilder's financial issues later on.

There are a lot of modern conveniences mentioned. It's fascinating to learn what was around in 1903:
~ Individual cone cups to have sanitary drinking on the train.
~ Locomobiles (cars)
~ Indoor plumbing
~ Indoor commodes (Rose thinking having one would make her feel like she lived in a henhouse made me laugh)
~ Electric lights
~ Telephones (and I forgot that all were on one line, with different ring tones for each house)
~ The wireless [radio]

Louisiana is like a foreign country for Rose, and she participates in and is exposed to other new things:
~ Going to the ice parlor
~ Seeing black people
~ Having hired help in the home (Viola is awesome)

Rose's drive for learning allows her to be enrolled in high school, despite not being able to pass the Latin test. She's part of the graduating class of 1904, and I'm determined to find a picture of them!
I’m sad I can’t find a lot of people though, like Odile Boudreaux. She and her family are fascinating. I love the Catholicism they bring to Rose’s life.

It’s amazing how views of certain ages-like 17- have changed in even a century (and truly, less than that).

I love how Rose relates learning Latin to Algebra[ic equations].

[pizza piku · Rating 4 out of 5]

the book circles around the issue of segregation and a bunch of ideologies. i like the theme of the book, i like how Rose became woke, i like how EJ is the epitome of hidup perempuan melawan. also, Viola deserve better. i’ve never read the other books in this series but i might. it’s so intriguing to see what old authors (old as in a century ago) have to say about racial classification, woman rights, socialism. although, we all overcome those by now (well, to a degree; maybe in discreet) i think there’s still some good points we can take home from this.

1. main plot
- Rose meets new type of people; socialists, Arcadias, conservatives
- Rose discovers her moral compass through subplots and experiences in Louisiana
2. sub plot
- Viola got taken away because she refused to accompany a wedded man???? f*ck that Mr McCathy!
- segregation is still the law (i want to reread the history of this in depth)
- arcadia from france lives alongside native americans (we know how that goes)
- EJ fights for woman’s rights

i love it. 4.5 stars if i could!

[Aldene · Rating 3 out of 5]

For us this book was not as good as some of the other Rose or Little House books. I didn't feel especially drawn into the story I felt that the author was trying to Jam in to many topics and issues with little or no resolution.
My 8 year old really likes the little house books and sometimes they might have some topics to talk about. This book has many topics your child might have questions on or need to talk with you about.
Such as what is a "Negro" this book uses the term a lot and talks about how they have a hard time getting jobs and are not welcome many places. Other topics such as rich white men taking sexual advantage over the poor especially women of color, Women's Oppression, Suffragettes, Socialism, Women not having Rights or the vote. It talks about girls getting married at 13 in some families as well as family dynamics, religious difference, dating etc.

[Erika RS · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the last couple books feeling like more of the same, this book was refreshingly different. Rose travels to Louisiana to live with her aunt and finish high school. She makes new friends, learns, and starts to grow up.

The downsides of this book were that the politics were (once again) rather invasive and the scenes rather disconnected. I think that these two problems are related. The problem with the politics was not that they were there; it was that they felt like an add on. But then, to some degree, everything in the book felt like an add on. I suspect that, since this book was completed after the author's death, it is more of a raw compilation of the anecdotes the author had heard from Rose than those anecdotes woven into a story like the early books in the series.

[Cerulione · Rating 1 out of 5]

While I grew up to love Laura Ingalls' Little House series, I cannot like Rose Wilder Lane as a character in this series and I personally find Roger Lea Macbride's Little House: The Rose Years series to be insufferable and shallow. Worst, the whole series is shallowly written.

Having recently read Caroline Fraser's Prairie Fire I cannot help disliking Rose Wilder Lane the person even more than the character Rose in the book I met years ago. In any case, the series does not have any warmth or feel of authenticity and what makes the original Little House series written by Laura Ingalls present. I'd suggest all original Little House fans to pass on this series and let Laura's story rest at the end of These Happy Golden Years.

[Celeste Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a little shorter and got into the heat of the change in politics in her time. E.J., Rose's Aunt is fighting for women's rights, and Rose feels "the call" that this is an important thing to fight for. Rose has a life-changing journey leaving home for the first time. She leaves for nine months, has an Acadian (French) friend, a beau from Chicago (but her heart is still planning with Paul), and she'll never be the same. She rises to the top of her class at the new high school and is the valedictorian. This is for kids over 11+ years old. It was a little too much for younger kids to understand the lingo of what was going on.

[Stephanie Pieck · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this installment, Rose Wilder has graduated from her local school. She wonders what's next for her and whether life will simply pass her by. When her aunt Eliza Jane comes to visit, her parents aren't too happy; their relationship with Eliza Jane has never been easy. But Eliza Jane has a surprise for the whole family.
Rose's adventures beyond Mansfield and her family farm are interesting and will keep readers entertained.

[Elizabeth Reid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great installment! My girls asked that I skip the socialist lecture and loved everything else. Yes, Rose did embrace a political ideology that I don't agree with, but that doesn't mean we can't still read and learn from her life. We also had a great time learning more about Louisiana in the early 20th Century.

[IrishFan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book, Rose finally leaves home to finish her schooling, loving with her aunt in Louisiana. She learns new things about herself and the world, and that she'd like to see more of it than just the little town of Mansfield.

[Siwabhorn Anothaisintawee · Rating 5 out of 5]

โร้สใช้เวลาปี่ 16-17 ของเธอเป็นเวลา 9 เดือนที่ลุยเซียนาเพื่อศึกษามัธยมปลาย เธอยังคงทำผลงานได้ดีเช่นเดียวกับตอนที่อยู่มิสซูรี โร้สมีเพื่อนสนิทคนใหม่เป็นชาวฝรั่งเศส ได้เรียนภาษาละติน มีคนมาติดพัน และได้เรียนรู้เรื่องสิทธิสตรี

[Kris Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this entry in the Rose series about the year she lived in Crowley, Louisiana, with her Aunt Eliza Jane (E.J.) and cousin, Wilder, so she could attend high school. Her experiences are so interesting and changed her so much!

[Kristen Luppino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rose learns of woman's suffrage and completes high school with her aunt. This is a great story of becoming an independent young woman.