Melissa Gilbert on family secrets, escaping Hollywood, and L.A. noir

Send us Fan MailHardboiled detective noir, and a multi-generational historical saga take center stage in the reading life of the actor Melissa Gilbert, best known for playing Laura Ingalls Wilder in the wildly successful TV series, Little House on the Prairie, which ran for nine years, and nine seasons. A quintessential bit of myth making of the America west, it gained new fans during the pandemic, thanks in part to its values of self-reliance and fortitude in the face of adversity. Gilbert recently  published a new memoir, Back to the Prairie, a funny, charming, and inspiring account of leaving behind her Hollywood life for a dilapidated cottage in the Catskills, where she and her husband, the actor Timothy Busfield, found a new community. my guest in this episode of Shelf Life.