LAURA INGALLS WILDER | Her Home in Mansfield, Missouri

Yesterday, going through books after the challenging immersion last week in #BookExpo2018,  I was dipping into "Dear Laura," a collection of letters to Laura Ingalls Wilder from her young fans.

That prompted me to send a letter to the woman in charge of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum in Mansfield, Missouri, Jean Coday.

I watched an interview with her on YouTube, about the Wilder Home and Museum, and was pleased that the Wilder books and home and the memory of the author are being kept alive so energetically. You can watch the interview here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl3CWzZACYQ

My mother, Hilda van Stockum Marlin (Newbery Honoree in 1935), was – like Wilder – a Viking Press author and we used to get each "Little House" book from May Massee, the editor, as it came out. 

My sister Olga Marlin was a special fan and she kept up a correspondence with Wilder. I asked Jean Coday whether any of that correspondence survives in the Mansfield home and museum. 

"Dear Laura" was published in 1996 by HarperCollins. 

If fan letters from Olga are not in Mansfield, they could be in the Herbert Hoover Library in West Branch, Iowa. Perhaps there is also another location for storage of these letters.

My sister Olga this year has just had published her second book, released by Scepter, which is located in New York, New York and Princeton, New Jersey. The book is called "Our Lives in His Hands: An Ordinary Couple's Path to Holiness," with a Foreword by Mary Ann Glendon.

Boissevain Books published a second edition of her first book, "To Africa with a Dream," which was initially published by Scepter.