The Long Winter

The Long Winter is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1940, the sixth of nine books in her Little House series. It is set in southeastern Dakota Territory during the severe winter of 1880–1881, when she turned 14 years old. The novel was a runner-up for the Newbery Medal in 1941. All the fourth to eighth Little House books from 1938 to 1943 were Newbery runners-up. In retrospect, they are called Newbery Honor Books. Plot summary On a hot August day in the 1880s, at the Ingallses' homestead in Dakota Territory, Laura offers to help Pa stack hay to feed their stock in the winter. As they work, she notices a muskrat den in the nearby Big Slough. Upon inspecting it, Pa notes that its walls are the thickest he has ever seen, and fears it is a warning that the upcoming winter will be a very hard one. In mid-October, the Ingallses wake to an early blizzard howling around their poorly insulated claim shanty. Soon afterward, Pa receives another warning from an unexpected source: an old Native American man comes to the general store in town to warn the white settlers that hard winters come in seven-year cycles and the hardest comes at the end of the third cycle. The coming winter is that twenty-first winter, and there will be seven months of blizzards. Pa decides to move his family into his store building in town for the winter.