Kelly Kathleen Ferguson needed to know—was connecting with her lifelong heroine the key to knowing herself? She decided to find out. Kelly donned a prairie dress and retraced the pioneer journey of Laura Ingalls Wilder. From Wisconsin to Minnesota, South Dakota to Missouri, she explored Laura’s past and her own. Part travelogue, part memoir and part social commentary, My Life as Laura shows how a relationship with a pioneer girl who lived in little houses long ago can give a sense of purpose for today.

REVIEWS & PRAISE

“In this charming, comic, capricious memoir, Kelly Kathleen Ferguson rediscovers her childhood love of a yellow box set of Little House books and embarks on an oddball journey filled with wit, self-effacing humor, and joyful obsession.” 

  — Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic and Desire

“You won't detect any drawl in this Southerner's voice. Ferguson is witty and edgy in a way that feels entirely fresh. This is stunningly sharp, pitch-perfect writing.” 

  — Neely Harris, editor of mental_floss magazine

“Grab your bonnet and plunk down in the sunny grass. Kelly Ferguson captures the high spirits and struggles of life on the prairie, then and now. A tribute to Wilder, a search for a truer self, a twenty-first-century pioneer journey, My Life as Laura shows us how the books we love lead us to the life we need.” 

  — Eric LeMay, author of Immortal Milk: Adventures in

      Cheese

“Hilarious, perceptive and true, a homespun story as genuine as the ones that inspired it.” 

  — Judy Blunt, author of Breaking Clean