A sweet, short read, [b: Let the Hurricane Roar|8335|Let the Hurricane Roar|Rose Wilder Lane|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1351943839s/8335.jpg|1952107] was originally published as a serial in The Saturday Evening Post. Parts of the novel will be familiar to readers of the books, as Lane names her protagonists after her grandparents and draws on some of the same family stories her mother used in [b: On the Banks of Plum Creek|7882|On the Banks of Plum Creek (Little House, #4)|Laura Ingalls Wilder|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1266449569s/7882.jpg|1402758]. But to be clear, the Charles and Caroline of this novel are not the historic Charles and Caroline Ingalls, and this is not a children's story.

Lane focuses on the isolation of pioneer life. Caroline (only seventeen!) gives birth to her first child at home with only her husband's help because there are no doctors and no other women near enough to assist. The following winter, after financial disaster forces Charles to travel east to find work, Caroline and their baby spend nearly six months alone in their prairie dugout, snowed in and cut off from the nearest town by near-constant blizzards. It's a survival tale that could have made a great movie.

The book shows its age somewhat in the writing style and characterizations. The library copy I read contained numerous margin notes from a previous reader who apparently thought Caroline was too submissive and mindless. One does need to make allowances for the time in which the story is set and the time in which it was written.

While not great literature, [b: Let the Hurricane Roar|8335|Let the Hurricane Roar|Rose Wilder Lane|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1351943839s/8335.jpg|1952107] is an enthralling tale and forms an interesting counterpoint to the Little House books.