There was something intoxicating about the relationship of Pa and his daughter Laura, a man's man and the little girl who was his kindred spirit. I grew up wanting to be Charles Ingalls, or maybe just his son-in-law. I don't know how many other young boys were crushing on Melissa Gilbert, but her new memoir, Prairie Tale, gives some indication of the attraction she must have generated.
In many ways the book is a classic retelling of every child actor's journey, with frequent flings (as Gilbert calls them), drugs, and later, booze. But there is something different here, if not redeeming. While Gilbert doesn't seem to regret much, she seems to have put her journey to use--trying to understand herself and her purpose in life. Like Maureen McCormick (Marcia Brady), Melissa Gilbert could never be as good as her famous character, though she enjoyed the escape into her fictionally idyllic life.
Prairie Tale lingers over the best stories of her years on Little House, revealing the parental role her TV dad played, even letting us in on her jitters at sharing a kiss and later a snuggle with an older actor when she'd never had these experiences for herself. For Little House fans largely unfamiliar with Gilbert's later work in TV movies, the book seems to spend too little time on the prairie, but it succeeds as a device to help us understand her journey.
Inside are the breakups and reconciliations with Rob Lowe, her disastrous first marriage, and finally her years with Bruce Boxleitner. Gilbert comes across as a little girl lost--grasping for acceptance in all the usual ways, but placing a world of circumstance on her adoption as an infant, framing herself as rejected by the young couple who had her for just a day. Now in her mid-40s, Gilbert has found a more contented life, embracing her kids and family, her renewed Jewish faith, and her sobriety, accepting that she can never be perfect.
But in the closing pages, as we read her happy wish to be a house cat in the next life, I felt empty, knowing there's a Father in Heaven who can give her everything she--and we--have spent our whole lives chasing.
