Here was a loving family that moved every year or so, again and again, just like me. Except they were searching for better luck, not with people but with new places. They were searching for a home. I liked the intricate descriptions of domestic life, the floor sweeping and water fetching and window cleaning and bed making written so deliciously I wished I had a twig-bough broom to use on a dirt floor, and a straw-tick mattress to fill with sweet, sun-warmed hay, and goose-feather pillows to plump. I read all the books in order, then reread them, and then I read only the disaster chapters (locusts, long winter storm, chimney fire) or only the new-house chapters (dugout, brand-new wood house, log cabin) or—my favorite—the food chapters (hog slaughter—ugh; oyster crackers at the surveyor’s house; pancakes from wheat in Almanzo’s walls; Pa survives a blizzard by eating a pound of candy).

But my very favorite food chapter of all was the one about a social supper. I like this one, first, because it’s a potluck—the whole town meets in the church and every lady brings her best dish—and, second, because it’s the only time Laura’s mother, Ma, is ever pissed about the patriarchal bullshit that keeps her and Laura in the kitchen all night while the men lounge and eat and drink, waited on like princes while the women wash and dry the hundreds of dishes and only then are allowed to pick the scraps off the leftover pig and chicken carcasses.

But this chapter also gave me the willies because at the potluck, Laura is a teenager and she’s got a teenager friend from school, Ida Brown. Ida is the minister’s daughter, and so of course she’s in the church kitchen, working her ass off all night, and when at last Laura thinks they are free to eat, another huge load of dirty dishes comes into the kitchen and Ida rolls up her sleeves.

“Aren’t you going to eat now?” Laura asks her, and Ida is super cheerful and says she can’t, because even after eight hours of cooking and cleaning, she doesn’t deserve food yet.

“I’m only an adopted child, you see,” Ida tells Laura. “I must be obedient and grateful to my parents. I’ll eat tomorrow,” or some such horseshit. I remember thinking maybe she was adopted, like, a month ago and still buying into that crap, but no. The minister and his wife had adopted poor Ida at birth, and then spent the next sixteen years making sure she knew she wasn’t really an actual person, “only an adopted child” and not worthy of respect or dinner at a reasonable hour, not until the manual labor was all done. Ida was, it seemed, less of a daughter and more of a beaten-down indentured servant.