I picked up this memoir at a local public library as I was casting around for CD sets to listen to during my commute. Sure, I recognized Melissa Gilbert as Laura Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie, which first aired on TV screens from 1974 to 1983. The show wasn't the usual entertainment for me back then, though. I was in college for four of those years, and our dorms didn't have access to cable TV during that Stone Age. I also haven't kept up with Gilbert's activities since then. Mostly, I was merely hoping to hear a good story, told by a good storyteller. And fortunately, she delivered one.

Evidently this book is a personal sequel to Prairie Tale: A Memoir (2009). Here Gilbert must have covered her early life, her Little House experiences, her subsequent career on stage and screen, her first two marriages and the births of her children. Back to the Prairie picks up on her divorce from her second husband Bruce Boxleitner and her meeting and eventual marriage to actor Timothy Busfield. Tim wrote the foreword to this memoir, and he also reads it on the CD.

At first, Melissa and Tim spend their off-stage time in Michigan, Busfield's homeland. But they long to find a perfect place to relax somewhere out in the country, away from the busy-ness of Los Angeles or Manhattan, yet close enough for them to be able to work in the city. Their search leads them to buy a fixer-upper in the Catskills, in Sullivan County, New York. Because the odd structure is neither a cabin nor a cottage, Gilbert decides to call it "The Cabbage."

MOST of this memoir is about the initial challenges they face in fixing up this second home. You may be impressed to hear that they tackle many of the construction projects themselves. Later, when the work is done, Gilbert shares the pure joys they experience in gardening and in watching local wildlife show up on the property. She gives us enough clues by mentioning nearby cities and towns (Port Jervis, Monticello, etc.) that we can nail down the region that the couple settled into.

And just as The Cabbage is ready for them to live in, what do you think comes their way? The pandemic. It's March 2020. Broadway has shut down, as have the big movie production companies. Now Melissa and Tim's country home becomes their full-time refuge from the virus. It's interesting to hear how even celebrities are brought down to the level of the rest of us during the lockdown. Perhaps enough time has passed that we can all reflect on what we did when we "sheltered in place." It was a shared misery.

Of course, along the way, we learn more about Gilbert as a person. She's a highly sensitive one, for sure. She likes to cook and has written at least one cookbook. (The PDF on the last CD contains six of her home-made recipes.) She has also had a variety of neck and back injuries over the years, affecting her general mobility and quality of life, any one of which could have ended her career. Her resilience is impressive. How many people do you know who would willingly take the stage with a broken back? (In her defense, she didn't yet know it was broken at the time.)

Gilbert reads/performs the narration on this CD edition with much animation and emotion. Even though she is now in her 50s, she still carries the schoolgirl voice of little Laura Ingalls. She would probably agree that this isn't a bad thing. Her childhood years spent on Little House continue to greatly inform and impact her life.

If you like celebrity memoirs, pandemic memoirs, or modern tales of "roughing it" in the 21st century, then you may indeed want to open up Back to the Prairie. Melissa Gilbert and Tim Busfield may have surprises in store for you.