Laura and Almanzo Wilder had a fresh start with 40 acres on Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield, Missouri, a place that Laura Ingalls Wilder lived in for 62 years. But until she became a best-selling author, life was a constant struggle to make ends meet for Wilder. She and her husband always had second or even third jobs. Their daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, compared their poverty and disappointments to “horrors in a dream.”