Prairie Lotus

Hanna is traumatized and allows Bess to finish the roses and do more hemming before going home. She prepares dinner for Papa, says nothing to him about Swenson and Conners, and goes to bed early. The next morning, she tells Papa she is ill and does not go to church. When he returns, he is upset and angry. He tells Hanna that several people approached him after church to say they would not come to the opening. Hanna sees that word is getting around about Mr. Swenson’s behavior, but that she is being blamed for the trouble. She does not tell Papa the truth and worries that if the shop’s chances are ruined, they will have to move on to try a new town.

Hanna can only think of a small plan to try to divert the failure of the shop but goes to Miss Walters for her opinion first. Hanna wants to approach the ladies of the town each in turn and tell them the truth of what happened. Miss Walters, however, tells Hanna she should not: “This may be one of those times when least said, soonest mended” (220). Heartbroken, Hanna goes home.

Hanna works on the dress although it is Sunday, determined to finish it on time. On Monday morning, Bess comes to tell Hanna she is not allowed to work with her anymore. Hanna is stunned but recalls that when she needed to, Mama accepted and even relied upon the help of others. Hanna asks to speak with Bess.

Hanna asks Bess pointedly if she would make the circuit of calls to the town’s women to explain how the incident at the hotel was in no way Hanna’s fault. Bess wants to help but worries about making contact: “I’m not good at talking to strangers” (225). Hanna suggests Bess go to Miss Walters first and talk with her. Bess agrees. Beyond that, though, Hanna hears nothing from anyone all day Monday. She works hours without stopping to complete the dress. She uses the flatiron to press the dress and is happy with how beautiful it looks. She hangs it in the window; in the morning, they will take down the brown paper that blocks the view from the outside, revealing the dress. Hanna thinks, “Mama would have loved it” (228). Papa cleans the shop again and Hanna goes to bed, devastated that Bess never returned and certain it means bad news.

In the night, Hanna realizes she needs to sew a lotus flower on the dress as a signature to her hard work, the way Mama did on her sewn creations. She slips down the shop, completes the flower on the underside of the collar, and goes back to bed, but it is dawn before she sleeps.

In the morning, Papa calls for her, frantic. She sees a long line of people outside waiting for the shop to open. Hanna is shocked to realize Bess’s message must have worked.

Bess helps Hanna serve the cookies and ginger shrub. Folks are interested in looking at the dress goods and the raffles go well. Though some individuals do not speak to Hanna or regard her like a servant, “the overall sense of gaiety bubbling though the room helped her ignore any unpleasantness” (234). Miss Walters indicates she wants to order a dress and tells Hanna she was correct in sending Bess to her for help. When they have a few minutes alone, Hanna thanks Bess sincerely. Bess tells Hanna that she and Miss Walters composed what to say to the town’s women before venturing out the day before. She says many did not need much in the way of persuading, as they knew how Mr. Swenson behaved in the past. Others agreed but indicated they would still be unable to attend the opening. Bess’s mother, for example, did not attend and Bess gives the excuse of laundry. Bess can continue to work for Hanna, and Hanna is thrilled to hear it, since she has seven dress orders to complete.

Sam and his little sister Pearl come to the shop near the end of the party. Hanna is happy to see them and gives Pearl the scrap of red ribbon she saved, using it to tie Pearl’s braids together. While Pearl looks at the buttons in the button box, Sam tells Hanna he will soon return to order doll clothes for Pearl’s birthday. Hanna is excited and tells Sam to bring the doll or measurements if he can. She finds herself looking forward to Sam’s future visits and realizing that the kindness and support of those in LaForge she cares about is more important than winning over the whole town.

Hanna busily measures, sews, and works in the shop in the coming days. She wonders suddenly one day what will happen when she runs into Mr. Swenson. She decides to have help on errands in the future and to warn others about Mr. Swenson with Bess’s and Miss Walters’s continued help. Most of all, she knows she must try to limit the impact of the memory of the assault: “She had to learn not to let him do it again and again in her head and in her dreams” (244).

Tired and ready for bed one evening, Hanna hears Papa call for her. Down in the shop, he reveals a special order that just came in: a full-length, freestanding mirror that pivots and turns. When Hanna first sees her reflection in the mirror, she thinks she is seeing a mirage of Mama. She is shocked to realize it is her own reflection. Papa acknowledges with a smile that a dressmaker needs a mirror, and as Hanna sees how similar she looks to Mama, she says the mirror is “exactly what [she] need[s]” (247).

In her author’s note, Linda Sue Park explains how she came to write Prairie Lotus and her intentions with the novel. Growing up as an Asian American child in the United States, Park says that she and many other children she knew were enraptured by Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. She personally imagined herself as a character in the books but acknowledges that Korean Americans like her would not have been present in the Wilder books.

Park reviews the immigration history for Asian Americans, explaining that first immigrants from Korea settled in Hawaii in the early 1900s, nowhere near the setting of the Wilder books. She adds that Asian immigration occurred in two main waves during the Gold Rush years and to build the transcontinental railroad in the 1800s. Park grew up in the Midwest, where the Wilder books were set, but says she struggled with the books even as a young reader, despite her passion for the novels. “There were parts that I found puzzling and distressing. The character of Ma was the most problematic. Her values of propriety and obedience over everything else seemed to me both misplaced and stifling. And Ma hated Native Americans” (250). Park adds that the racism she encountered in the Wilder books helped her to realize that she would never be welcomed as Laura’s friend, because she wasn’t white.

Park states that the racism Hanna encounters in Prairie Lotus is autobiographical and that she wrote Hanna’s interactions with Indigenous Americans to highlight the importance of the existence of the first peoples in the Americas before colonization. She says, “to ignore them is an incalculable loss, because learning their truths makes us stronger and more capable of facing the challenges in our communities” (251). She notes that though the Indigenous women in the novel are labeled as Sioux, when they would have been a part of the Ihanktonwan reservation. Park writes that she hopes readers will see where she has both honored and challenged the Wilder novels in her own and that many parts of Prairie Lotus were based on true, historical events and describes the sources used to research the time for the novel.

Park concludes her note with hope that Wilder would have approached Prairie Lotus with an open mind. She says that the novel “is an attempt to reconcile [her] childhood love of the Little House books with my adult knowledge of their painful shortcomings” (256). She says she hopes the book will provide a space for discussion and reflection for the adults and children who read it.