On the Way Home  On the Way Home is the diary of an American farm wife, Laura Ingalls Wilder, during her 1894 migration with husband Almanzo Wilder and seven-year-old daughter Rose from De Smet, South Dakota, to Mansfield, Missouri, where they settled permanently. It provides detailed, daily description of the family's migration and includes commentary by Rose – "a setting by Rose Wilder Lane". It was published in 1962, after Laura's death, by Harper & Bros., who had published her Little House series of novels. "On the Way Home" is sometimes considered part of the Little House series, which is narrowly a series of nine autobiographical children's novels based on Wilder's life from about 1870 to 1894 in South Dakota, ages about three to 27.