The Long Winter (novel) - Allusions/references To Actual History, Geography and Current Science

Allusions/references To Actual History, Geography and Current Science

Wilder was, by her own admission, a writer of historical fiction. Most of the people, places and events she describes are actually from her own life, but she sometimes juxtaposed events and compressed characters in the interest of good storytelling. The Long Winter, however, contains far less fiction than her other books; it is, for the most part, an accurate description of that winter in De Smet. The Long Winter runs from the fall of 1880 to the spring of 1881, a season of such frequent blizzards that it went down in history as "The Snow Winter". Accurate details in Wilder's novel include the names of the townspeople (with only minor exceptions), the blizzards' frequency and the deep cold, the Chicago and North Western Railway stopping trains until the spring thaw when the snow made the tracks impassable, the near-starvation of the townspeople, and the courage of Almanzo Wilder and Cap Garland, who ventured out on the open prairie in search of a cache of wheat that no one was even sure existed.

The fictionalized material includes the "Indian warning" in an early chapter and the duration and frequency of blizzards. While historical records indicate a larger than usual number of blizzards that winter, Laura's description of storms lasting on average three days each, with only two to two-and-a-half days separation, from late October until early April, would imply about 35 separate blizzards during that time frame, which may be dramatic license. Local oral history and research by Ingalls' biographers also indicate that Wilder and Garland traveled about 12 miles south of De Smet to find the wheat, not 20 as she states in the book. Almanzo Wilder is portrayed as being roughly six years older than Laura, when he was in fact ten years older. Aside from these minor variations, however, the book is an accurate portrayal of that legendary winter in Dakota Territory.