On the eve of her husband's receipt of a prestigious literary award, Joan Castleman, who has put her own writing ambitions on hold to support her husband, evaluates her choices and decides to end the marriage.

Laura Ingalls Wilder is widely loved as the author of the Little House books that detail her life growing up in woods and on the prairies that were the frontiers of her time. Yet unknown to readers and publishers of the time and even until recently, Laura's daughter Rose had a substantial hand in crafting those stories for children. Rose was a well-recognized writer on her own, and it was she who encouraged her mother to write, then substantially...