Sarah Diehn Manley [2017- present] has been a Laura Ingalls Wilder fan ever since she got the yellow paperback “Little House” boxed series, straight from the Sears catalog as a Christmas present from her grandparents in 3rd grade. A mother-daughter roadtrip to Walnut Grove – complete with a flooded Plum Creek and a follow up trip to DeSmet the next summer, only fueled her interest in all things Laura.

Sarah even married her “Manley” who grew up in Arlington, SD (just 20 miles east of DeSmet)! A trip to go puttering around Kingsbury County (lakes, towns, antique stores, and poor gravel roads) became a favorite activity every time she went to her in-laws’ home in South Dakota. A recent home remodel means she FINALLY has a place to display all of her “Little House” books, including her Sewell copy of Little House on the Prairie stamped from the Kingsbury County Library in DeSmet.

Now with family members in Wisconsin and South Dakota she has hit all of the upper Midwest homesites several times and is looking forward to her first adventure to New York to see the setting around the book, Farmer Boy. She has been a member since 2010, was the “conference tweeter” at LauraPalooza 2015, 2017 and 2019 and looks forward to a great LauraPalooza 2022.