OWOSSO — Not everyone who grew up with the TV series “Little House on the Prairie” in the 1970s knows the show was based on a true story about an American pioneering family, but fewer still have heard of author Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Aunt Docia.
Docia Ingalls, sister of Charles Ingalls (“Pa” on the TV show), appears briefly in two of the “Little House” books. But if she’s remembered at all, it’s as a woman her niece, Wilder, didn’t particularly care for. Docia was said to be an irritable woman who made her children work too hard.
Enter Elizabeth Fairweather of Owosso, who believes Docia is misunderstood. She decided to set the record straight. Fairweather, an author of several romances, has just released “Docia’s Diary,” a fictional reimagining of the forgotten Ingalls.
“Docia had a hard life, her first husband was an alcoholic who couldn’t hold a job and the family moved constantly,” Fairweather, 51, said….
