Mailbox Monday - February 2

Mailbox Monday is a meme started by Marcia of To Be Continued. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It now has a permanent home at the Mailbox Monday blog.

Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles, and humongous wish lists.

Happy Groundhog Day!

It is a snowy Monday in New England. This is our second major snowstorm in the span of two weeks. The kids and hubby are home for the day. We are expecting 6 to 12 inches of the white stuff. Yuck!

If you stopped by on Friday, you learned my long-awaited copy of Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography by Laura Ingalls Wilder and edited by Pamela Smith Hill arrived. I am so excited. Amazon had trouble filling orders of this book. I should have gotten it from the museum. It would have arrived sooner.

Pioneer Girl, for anyone who doesn't know, was Wilder's original manuscript. It was rejected and turned into a series of children's books. I know it will take me a while to get through this one, but I am so thrilled to have it.

Follow the real Laura Ingalls and her family as they make their way west and discover that truth is as remarkable as fiction.

Hidden away since the 1930s, Laura Ingalls Wilder's never-before-published autobiography reveals the true stories of her pioneering life. Some of her experiences will be familiar; some will be a surprise. Pioneer Girl re-introduces readers to the woman who defined the pioneer experience for millions of people around the world.

Through her recollections, Wilder details the Ingalls family s journey from Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, back to Minnesota, and on to Dakota Territory sixteen years of travels, unforgettable stories, and the everyday people who became immortal through her fiction. Using additional manuscripts, diaries, and letters, Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography builds on Wilder s work by adding valuable context and explores her growth as a writer.

Author of an award-winning Laura Ingalls Wilder biography, editor Pamela Smith Hill offers new insights into Wilder s life and times. In an introduction, Hill illuminates Wilder s writing career and the dynamic relationship between the budding novelist and her daughter and editor, Rose Wilder Lane. Sharing the story of Wilder s original manuscript, Hill discusses the catalysts for Pioneer Girl and the process through which Wilder s story turned from an unpublished memoir into the national phenomenon of the Little House series.

Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography also explores the history of the frontier that the Ingalls family traversed and the culture and life of the communities Wilder lived in. This groundbreaking volume develops a fuller picture of Wilder s life and times for the millions of readers who wish to learn more about this important American author. It contains one hundred and twenty-five images, eight fully researched maps, and hundreds of annotations based on numerous primary sources, including census data, county, state, and federal records, and newspapers of the period.

An important historic and literary achievement, this annotated edition of Pioneer Girl provides modern readers with new insights into the woman behind the fictional classics Little House in the Big Woods, Farmer Boy, Little House on the Prairie, On the Banks of Plum Creek, By the Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie, These Happy Golden Years, and The First Four Years.



I also received this book, though I am not sure why. It could have come to me unsolicited. Either that or I don't remember requesting it. Sounds like a fascinating novel.

A terrible loss. A desperate journey.
A mother seeks the truth.

In December of the year 1377, five children were burned to death in a suspicious house fire. A small band of villagers traveled 200 miles across England in midwinter to demand justice for their children’s deaths.

Sinful Folk is the story of this treacherous journey as seen by Mear, a former nun who has lived for a decade disguised as a mute man, raising her son quietly in this isolated village.

For years, she has concealed herself and all her secrets. But in this journey, she will find the strength to claim the promise of her past and find a new future. Mear begins her journey in terror and heartache, and ends in triumph and redemption.

What was in your mailbox?