Little House on the Prairie is a classic American children’s series. The books follow the life and challenges of the Ingalls family as told by their daughter Laura. They chronicle the frontier life of white settlers who pushed far into the West and struggled to farm land. They were comforting stories of blazing hearths and bedtime fiddling, of family love overcoming locusts and blizzards and prairie fires. But behind Laura Ingalls Wilder's positive depiction of prairie life was a darker story.