Double Feature: Long, Bright River and Little House on the Prairie

 

Long, Bright River by Liz Moore - I enjoyed The God of the Woods by the same author so much that I decided to read this earlier book, published in 2020. On the surface, the two novels couldn't be more different. God of the Woods is set in rural upstate New York, while Long, Bright River is set in the rough neighborhood of Kensington in Philadelphia. However, both stories are about searching for those that go missing.

The protagonist of Long, Bright River is Mickey, a female cop in her early thirties, estranged from her extended family and most recently from her younger sister, Kacey, who is a heroin addict who supports her addiction as a prostitute. A recent series of murders of girls just like Kacey alarms Mickey because she hasn't seen her sister around the neighborhood for weeks. 

The main storyline revolves around Mickey searching for Kacey while trying to figure out the identity of the serial killer. In the process, we learn the sisters' backstory--their heroin-addicted mother died and their father abandoned them, leaving them in the care of their cold, cynical grandmother. We learn about wild child Kacey and studious Mickey, whose dreams of college are sabotaged before they have a chance to bloom.

I know this all sounds depressing, but Mickey is a great character, with grit and honor and a deep love of her sister. She learns from her mistakes and finds unexpected allies when she needs them. This is a world that is often tough to read about--the title refers to the river of people who have lost their lives to drugs and despair--but the writing is terrific, the characters are interesting and believable, and the story ends on a positive note.

I think I prefer God of the Woods, but Long, Bright River also earned 5 stars from me on GoodReads.

At 482 pages, this qualifies for the 2026 Big Book Summer Challenge.

I decided to give the new Netflix series based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House of the Prairie a try and ended up really liking it. I grew up reading the entire LIW series repeatedly but never watched the 1970s TV series. I was definitely devoted to the books and didn't care for all the liberties that Michael Landon took.

Now that I am >50 years older than when Melissa Gilbert first started her incarnation as Laura, I am actually quite happy with all the liberties that Netflix took with their source material. Here are some of thoughts about the series and some of the changes. 

•  The Native Americans are fully part of the story. In the book, the Ingalls family's encounters with the Native Americans are always negative. They inspire fear and are described as savages. In this version, a Native American family is living in a house much older and more well-established than the one Pa builds. Laura becomes good friends with the daughter of the family, and the father is one the tribe's representatives who argues their case to the government agents. Unlike in the books, it is made abundantly clear that the Ingalls family is building a house and farming on land that is not available to them at all--they were stealing the land from the Native Americans. The script shows that Pa was deceived by the railroad company that wanted settlers to be where they wanted to run a RR line, but even after he learned the truth, they didn't leave until forced to.
•  The town of Independence is not 40 miles away, as depicted in the book, making the Ingalls family completely isolated. Instead, the town is bustling with lots of stores and houses--this is pretty unrealistic, as no railroad line currently runs through the town. But, it is a place where the family goes together to shop and interact with the inhabitants.

•  Mary is much older than Laura (and without blonde hair, although the girls are mostly dressed in blue for Mary and pink for Laura, as in the books). She is at least 13 to Laura's 8 or 9, flirts with a local boy, and has her first kiss! What this means is that Mary has a story line of her own, beyond being the goody-two-shoes as depicted in the book.
•  Baby Carrie is born while the family is in Indian Territory, which is what actually happened rather than what Laura wrote. This provides an interesting little sub-arc for Laura's relationship to Pa--she has always been his helper and a tomboy, and with Ma pregnant she worries that the baby will be a boy and Pa will treat her differently since he will finally have a son. 
•  Pa has a beard, just like in the book. I always thought it was weird that Michael Landon never grew a beard as this was such a defining physical characteristic of Pa. 
•  The writers did an excellent job of pulling Little House in the Big Woods into Little House on the Prairie, with the family and especially Laura remembering the stories and games, relatives and parties that are such a wonderful part of the first book.
•  Pa's brother George suffers from PTSD from serving in the Civil War, and Pa feels tremendous guilt about not being able to help him deal with it. Pa is labeled as a coward by some of the men in town when they learn he didn't fight in the war but stayed home on the farm to help his father.
•  Mr. Edwards is also a Civil War veteran, and an alcoholic who goes off on fiery binges. I was glad that they included the Civil War in the script--Laura was born two years after it ended, and there is nary a mention of it beyond George blowing his trumpet in LHBW.
•  Several African Americans are featured, including Dr. Tan, who is in the book, and Ma becomes close to the woman who owns the store and stands up to the other women in town when they exclude her friend from the Women's Society meeting.

I enjoyed the series, not so much for bringing the book to life, but because they took the raw material of the book and made an interesting variation for modern sensibilities. That said, most of the storylines were still hopelessly unrealistic. Life on the prairie in the 1870s was rough--this series made it look like a picnic. Just as Laura whitewashed much of her own story and the experiences of her family for her children's books, the NetFlix version has done something similar. 

The new series has been renewed for season 2. Yep. Gonna watch it too.