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Rating: 
Summary: An in depth and living portrait of Rose and family.
Review: A great fan of the Little House books, I recently renewed my love for them by reading them to my daughter. I also renewed my curiosity about what happened "happily ever after." As I read "A Little House Sampler", I immediately suspected that Rose, a skilled writer, had a hand in the Little House Books, but I pictured a loving collaberation between mother and daughter. And it left me with only more questions about Rose: Why did her marriage end? Did she have children? Did she write the great American novel? William Holtz' biography "A Ghost in Little House" answers all these questions and more. It is an in depth and living portrait of Rose's life as she encounters excitement and adversity. It seems that Mama Bess and Manly are not exactly Laura and Almanzo. All are flawed in some way, but I find that I can still love the Little House books and the true story. Of course, to my daughter, I repeat Rose and Mama Bess's assertions that every word of Little House is true American history.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad, but it could have been better
Review: I am a huge LIW fan, and found this book very interesting. It is indeed a bitter pill for the mot devoted Laura fans to swallow that Rose had a hand in the books, but anyone who has ever read the disjointed style of "On the Way Home" or the god-awful boring prose of "Let the Hurricane Roar" can see quite clearly that these books would not have been the classic they are without the hands of BOTH women involved. Frankly, neither woman wrote anything very interesting without the other one helping them out. ;) They benefit greatly from Rose's technical skill and eye for editing, and for Laura's attention to detail and engaging story-telling. This necessary push-and-pull effect created wonderful books, but I can only imagine how much stress it most have caused both mother and daughter as they were hashed out. I enjoyed this book, and thought it helped give a better idea of both Laura and Rose,
Rating: 
Summary: Rose, you must chill!
Review: I find Rose a fascinating character who has a love/hate relationship with the woman most of us grew up loving. The fact that she had such a heavy hand in creating this person we all feel we know and love is the ultimate irony. I read through this quickly, unfortunately, too quickly as I have very few impressions beyond that and I'm trying desperately now to separate fact from fiction after reading this and Roger Lea McBridge's sanitized-for-the-kids 8 volume set AND the book he published apart from Harper Rowe which is more adult but still fiction. I guess I'm still fascinated with the subject of Rose's marriage to Gillette, since it is presented as one thing in this book and quite another by Roger's account. I guess the fact this book raises more questions than it answers for me gives it an extra star for the fascinating factor. As a Laura fan, it bothers me a little to see her painted in anything less than a positive light, but makes her and her remarkable daughter even more real.
Rating: 
Summary: Well researched, poorly concluded
Review: If you are interested in this book, you have probably already read quite a bit of LIW. I, like many I know, read everything I could that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote (even one or two poems written when she was still Laura Ingalls), including articles and letters that found their way into anthologies, everything I could find that Rose wrote, and as much as I could about them. It's easy to accept that Rose edited. It's impossible to believe she re-wrote, which is quite a different thing. Their voices are very different. "On the Way Home" and LIW's farming articles still sound like Laura--does Holtz expect us to believe Rose fixed her mother's diaries as well--and rewrote, from Albania, the articles in the Missouri Ruralist? He attaches way to much importance to easily disputed minutia. We are supposed to be horrified that LIW's last letter to her daughter was signed lovingly ("Mama Bess) followed by formally (Laura Ingalls Wilder.) However, in Little Town on the Prairie, Caroline (Laura's mother, a good guy) signs her daugher's autograph book in much the same way. This was simply a result of Laura's being from a much more formal time than Holtz's. IF two different types of signatures was truly an indication of coldness and IF Rose was the author of the Little House books, she would have made sure that didn't get into Little Town on the Prairie! Holtz maintains that a letter wherein Laura wrote something to the effect of "do anything you want with the damn thing, just fix it up" means Rose is the author. As a published author who also has friends and family, I recognize a reckless statement when I see one. Laura no more intended Rose to be the author of her books than she intended strangers from future generations to know that she sometimes employed the word "damn." It was a reckless and personal statement, not literary harbinger. And what's with refering to Mary, every time but in the index, as "Blind Aunt Mary"? Does an intelligent and non-biased writer need to constantly refer to someone by a disability? This is simply not a nice person. It seems Holtz wanted to elevate RWL and couldn't without denigrating LIW, in the manner of the school bully. So much research used so personally makes an uneven if important book.
Rating:
Summary: The Cost of Creativity
Review: Many earlier reviewers of "A Ghost in the Little House" complained that this portrait of mother and daughter was unflattering, and biased. They missed the point entirely. This is not a book about Laura, it is a book about Rose. And Rose, whether justified or not, was often angry and unhappy with her mother. William Holtz is a scholar who painstakingly reviewed thousands of pages of personal letters, memoirs and books, gathered over Rose Wilder Lane's life, to compile a portrait of a complex and intellegent woman years ahead of her time. Readers looking for entertainment and a light read, or insight into the fictional character Laura, were doomed to be disapointed. Those interested in a creative, volatile and sometimes manic depressive woman, who's ideas still impact today's society, won't be. In fact, Rose's ideas on freedom and human rights were very advanced and her writings are still a key part of the Libertarian party platform. Frankly, any serious writer who has been edited can see and appreciate Rose's hand in her mother's work. The Little House books were written for children, with an amazing time twist that increases the complexity of the plot and writing so that the reader grows up with the character. Still, these stories cannot logically be compared to Rose's own work which was meant for adults. Further, Rose's books are very much written to sell, and have a decided flavor of the times in which they were published.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but it could have been better
Review: The only lengthy biography of Laura's daughter, this book details the fascinating life of Rose Wilder Lane. Rose was a very different personality than her mother, but she lived an equally interesting life. What this book is best known for is the claim that Rose not only edited the Little House books for her mother, but basically ghost wrote them. It is true that this is the first book to draw major attention to the fact that Rose helped her mother with the books.But it is not accurate to state that she edited them so much they were her own work. If you read Rose's fiction, then you read the Little House books, you can see she wrote in a different style than Laura. Reading a collection of Laura's earlier farm newspaper writings, you can see that Laura did have writing ability. Rose was much more familiar with the world of professional writing than Laura was. Certainly, she did help Laura, but this book overstates things.
Perhaps the truth is that Rose was a better editor than a writer.Most people would much rather read the Little House books than Rose's stories like ''Innocence'' and ''Autumn''. A better view of the collaboration of Laura and her daughter is in Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder by John Miller. But this book is worthwhile to read if you want the story of Rose's life independent of that of her mother.I am distantly related(through her father's relatives) to Laura, and thus to Rose.
Rating:
Summary: Could have been WAY better.
Review: This book took me forever to read. I took it on a long flight and still couldn't finish it. It's hard to feel anything for any of these self absorbed people. I found it tooooo detailed. I think a good editor was in dire need. I have always thought LIW sounded like a cold unfeeling person, just reading books beyond the Little House series and believe the author of Ghost gave us an accurate picture of Mama Bess. As a child I read everything written by LIW and loved her and the Ingalls family, then I grew up. Looking back I realized what a complex I had about being dark skinned and brunette cuz of these silly books (I'm Latina) the racism is another flaw. This is why I don't let me two daughters read this series. As far as Rose writing the books...yeah that's so believable as well...let's face it...Laura was a barefoot bumpkin, I really don't think she found this talent all of a sudden in her later years. If she were alive now, she'd be living in a trailer park in Missouri. Rose, on the other hand, as spun as she was did have some living under her belt. She was years ahead in her thinking, well travelled and very intelligent. She did things Mama Bess would never even think of doing. I wanted to know...as I forced myself to read this...did Almanzo ever matter or did he lose some of his mental capability from his stroke and was put in a flower pot somewhere in the little house never to be heard from again? Anyway if you're a detail person who wants to read about an unhappy unfullfilled woman (as exciting as her life actually was) then this is the book for you.
Rating: 
Summary: A most ridiculously biased and poorly written book.
Review: When I finished this book (after, admittedly, skimming the more dense and boring sections), I was left with a feeling of great pity for Rose Wilder Lane, not the impression that I am sure Prof. Holtz was aiming to create. Taken altogether, Rose's life appears to have been marked by recurring depression, tension in her relationship with her mother, persistent money troubles, failed personal relationships, and a sense of never living up to what she was capable of achieving. The mother-daughter relationship was very shallowly explored, leaving the reader to wonder why on earth Rose would resent and even hate such a wonderful "Mama Bess." The competition between the two women was suggested but not examined in great enough depth. I think this was a very serious mistake because, on the one hand, Prof. Holtz wanted to maintain that many of Rose's difficulties were caused by her "mother problem," but on the other, he did not offer enough evidence to prove that this was so. The book is worth reading, however, because of the dimension it adds to the picture of Laura, who must have felt more or less constantly at a loss about how to deal with her strange daughter.
Rating:
Summary: Co-author or fine editor?
Review: While I very much enjoyed reading this biography about Rose and reading excerpts of her own well crafted writing, this book disturbed me. The author of "Ghost" repeatedly tried to assert the merit of his own book by discrediting Mrs. Wilder's talent and character. He didn't need to. "Ghost" is a fine biography of a complex women in its own right. It seems to me that Rose's role in the Little House books was that of a skilled editor. I wouldn't deny that she had a crucial role, but to insinuate that she was somehow cheated out of her just billing as co-author seems overly sensational. Having read works attributed both to Mrs. Wilder and to Mrs. Lane, I see distinct differences in style. Rose's work is sophisiticated and crafted. Laura was a gifted storyteller. Both were strong, admirable women. Each in her own way paid a high price for her independent nature, and each in her own way made a significant contribution to literature. They competed enough in life; I would have preferred that author of "Ghost" not extend that competition into their legacies as well.
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