Prairie Tale: A Memoir Review

Have you ever sat down to write a paper or proposal or for that matter, a review and said to yourself, "This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do?"  Well, that is how I feel right now as I am gathering up my thoughts and debating what to tell you about Melissa Gilbert's book Prairie Tale.  I've written tons of book, movie and music reviews but this one is different.  Why?  Because I know that Melissa Gilbert herself will be reading it. 

I have been active on Twitter since about March and I have been following Melissa Gilbert.  I affectionately dubbed her MEG with my friends in Twitterville because of her initials.  Anyhow, she has sent me several comments thru the months and when I found out she was releasing her autobiography of sorts I knew I would want to read it.  I preordered it from amazon and it arrived yesterday and I finished the 367 page book earlier today!  Yes, it was that good!  I told MEG that I wrote for Viewpoints and after I posted the review I would send it her way.  So, I'm hoping this review does justice.

I loved Little House On the Prairie (LHOP) as a child and I fell for Michael Landon as Pa, thought Willie (Jonathan Gilbert) was always the cute one and I fell for Albert (Matthew Labyorteaux) because he had the brains of the boys.  I was so in love with Michael Landon that I swore if I ever had a little boy I was going to name him Landon Ingalls. I thought the Ingalls girls had it made because their parents were Charles and Caroline.  I was even more fascinated when I found out my father was born in St. Paul, MN; which I believe was in the general vicinity of Walnut Grove.  I have some of my dad's school pictures with N. Mankato School stamped on them.  I used to tell my family that I wish I could have lived during the days of LHOP because of the tight-knit community and the love that was shared amongst family and township.  So oh boy was I utterly surprised when I read that MEG also felt the same way.  She wanted to be a part of the family that was her onscreen family because she felt the unconditional love and the liberty to be herself.  Never in my wildest dreams would I believe she suffered from some of the very same insecurities that I did (poor self-image, low self-esteem, etc.).  She turned to the arms of men who promised to love her and I fell into the throes of anorexia.

We have known Melissa Gilbert as the little red-headed girl with the buck-tooth grin who played Laura Ingalls Wilder aka Half-Pint on LHOP.  I have followed her career from LHOP to all the movies that she has starred in that now air on Hallmark and Lifetime channels and one would believe she had it all and loved life but Prairie Tale sheds a different light on a child star trying to find her place in the world. 

Melissa Gilbert was either interviewed for Lifetime's Intimate Portraits or E! The True Hollywood Story and I discovered she was adopted.  Her parents believed that they could not have children so they adopted her and three years later they adopted her younger brother Jonathan Gilbert who would play Willie Oleson and then by some miraculous undertaking they conceived Sara who would also make her mark on the entertainment industry as Darlene on the Roseanne show.  Okay, I may be getting ahead of myself or the book.

I loved the book for many reasons.  I loved that the chapters had titles and not just numbers.  Each new title made me anticipate a certain event.  The forward by Patty (Anna) Duke is just a taste of what's to come.  One of the really fascinating things for me was to see just how well-known and loved Melissa was and yet she had a hard time loving herself.  I loved reading all the stories about the various famous people she hung out with; especially the dreamy guys she dated. Having been a part of the 80s generation it was a walk down memory lane when she revisited her years with Hollywood's Brat Pack.  She is very open about her years when her life was spiraling out of control; when she became a slave to drugs and alcohol and what it took for her to recover.

As I read the book I also had some LHOP episodes playing and I was awestruck that the person who was playing a teacher as Mrs. Wilder was only 17.  I won't give away too much of the book because you know I hate the spoilers but I will say this.  I was in fits of laughter as I read her part on having to "fall in love" with Dean Butler (Almanzo) because of the age difference.  She was 15, flat-chested and had no experience in the field of lovemaking but had to fall in love with and marry this man.  When I watched another episode I paid close attention to that and thought how difficult that must have been but how she pulled it off like a piece of cake.

Prairie Tale takes you on one woman's journey of self-discovery.  Who was she?  Why her birth parents wanted to give her up?  And how to love yourself.

Read Prairie Tale to find the answers to the following:

• Does Melissa find her birth parents?  Does she have a relationship with them today?
• What happened after LHOP ended?
• What was her relationship like with Michael Landon and his family before and after LHOP?
• What were the skeletons in her closet and what demons did she have to face and conquer?
• What were her views on her body and what medical conditions have she dealt with?
• What's it like for her being a mother?

Melissa was put into the spotlight at an early age and expected to live up to the standards of Hollywood.  Many times while reading the book my mind went back to that dreadful movie Mommie Dearest about Joan and Christina Crawford, also an adopted child.  Melissa wasn't abused but she was being forced to live the perfect life in front of and away from the cameras.  For every Kodak moment she had a heartbreak.  It was only when the cameras stopped rolling that she began living. 

A very funny and ironic thing is this: While I was reading about her trying to reconcile some differences with her current husband, Bruce Boxleitner, I was also watching the LHOP episode titled: Divorce, Walnut Grove style.  It's the one where she leaves Almanzo and goes back home to Ma and Pa.  It's also the episode in which Pa is trying to install a new plate glass window but everytime he gets close someone breaks it.  Remember that?

You know I love to pull out quotes or passages so it would be a disservice if I didn't share some with you.  Read Prairie Tale to get a better understanding of the following and/or the people they are pertaining to.

• I've tried to give them an understanding of loss and a sense of grief as a necessary part of life.  I wanted them to realize that without such sadness and pain, there can be none of the love and happiness, and loss doesn't mean you have to give up the good stuff in your heart.
• The celebrity-chasing photographers are called paparazzi.  I call the people who stare across the room the recognazzi.
• He also started me on the process of realizing that I like many people, could have everything I had ever wanted in life but still be missing the things I actually needed.
• Mike Farrell talked me out of canceling them by explaining that the point of terrorism was to terrorize people, cities, and an entire country to the point where they ceased to function.  If I canceled, he said, they would win.
• His (Dustin Meraz) words are engraved on a bracelet I wear on my left wrist: "Today is a gift, have fun."  Could there be better advice?
• I also felt the pressure of the Little House legacy.  Would we be able to catch lightening in a bottle again?

If you were a fan of LHOP you will enjoy Prairie Tale as Melissa recounts her memories of the cast and special or challenging scenes.  I loved to hear about her relationship with Allison Arngrim (Nellie), Karen Grassle (Caroline) and Katherine McGregor (Mrs. Oleson).  I never knew that Mr. Edwards played by Victor French had a double by the name of Jake Lilly.  I cried when Michael Landon passed away in the '90s and I cried again today as I read about his death from one of his girls.

So where is Melissa Gilbert today?  She was president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) for 2 terms.  She has starred in numerous made for TV movies and a few series.  She is wife, mother, daughter, sister, activist, friend, writer and star.  She is currently president of the board of directors for Children's Hospice and Palliative Care Coalition.  She will also be touring with the cast of the LHOP musical in the fall.

Speaking of musical, I was very surprised to read that she studied ballet for a time and that she can actually sing.  Maybe once again, that is why I have been drawn to her--my passion for ballet and singing.  

I lived for 20+ years with anorexia and knew that there was an underlying issue, far beneath the surface that caused my medical ordeal to almost claim my life.  As I went through eight years of intensive therapy I learned a lot of what Melissa talked about and if you have any issues of low self-esteem, unloveliness, etc. you can also discover that place you are looking for.   As you read Prairie Tale you will discover just how much Melissa Gilbert has overcome to arrive to a place of peace and tranquility.  Like Alice in the looking glass you will think you have fallen into a deep dark tunnel.  You will journey thru a world of darkness and come into the light and like my daddy used to say, "No, the light at the end of the tunnel isn't a freight train.  It's the love of God."

In Melissa's own words: "Ultimately, it didn't matter what people called me.  I didn't have to be one person to anyone, including myself.  Instead of worrying about who I was, the key was to focus on who I could become."

I loved Prairie Tale and know in time I will pick the book up and read it again.  I would love to see this book made into an autobiographical movie.   I will let you know that she does use some very intense and at times crude language; which you know usually gets the best of me but I took it all in context and kept reading.  After reading a few chapters and seeing some of her comments on Twitter I have realized that she is unabashedly and unashamedly very open, honest and candid.  After reading her book I felt as if I really knew Melissa Gilbert.  She took you so far into her inner sanctum, her private hell and her joyous recovery and new life that you felt as if you were a part of it all from the very start and maybe, in a sense watching her grow up on TV right before our eyes we were.  

If I could ask her a few questions they would be:

• Why wasn't there much more said about Jonathan?
• How did you wear braces while filming Little House?  They didn't have the clear ones back then did they and I don't think we ever saw you in braces. 
• Why didn't you mention the movies Look-Alike, The Undesirable and Thicker Than Water?  To this day I am still freaked out when I think about your dual role with the doppleganger in Look-Alike and Michael Gross trying to kill you in The Undesirable.  And as you know from all my tweets: I just love Thicker Than Water and Zoya. 

If my thoughts aren't enough to encourage you to read the book perhaps Melissa's quote on the back cover will:

"A large part of my life has been an illusion--not an illusion crafted through carefully controlled media, but more like light going through a prism in that there's one story bent in numerous directions.  There's my mother's version, there's the one in the press, there's the one I lived, and there's the one I'm still trying to figure out."

Additional Book Information:

• ISBN: 978-1-1465-9914-2
• Publication Date: 2009
• Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
• Format: 367 pages, Hardcover
• Cover Price: $26.00
• My Price: $17.16 plus $3.99 s/h 

Update on June 10th: I just received a message from Melissa Gilbert over in Twitterville. She said she just read my review and that I left her speechless.