The Long Winter is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1940, the sixth of nine books in her Little House series.

[4] On a hot August day in 1880, at the Ingallses' homestead in Dakota Territory, Laura offers to help Pa stack hay to feed their stock in the winter.

Food and fuel become scarce and expensive, as the town depends on the railroad to bring supplies but the frequent blizzards prevent trains from getting through.

With no more coal or wood, the Ingallses learn to use twisted hay for fuel and grind wheat kernels in a coffee mill to make flour for the day's bread.

[5] Accurate details in the novel include the names of the townspeople (with only minor exceptions), the blizzards' severity and the deep cold, the Chicago and North Western Railway stopping trains until the spring thaw after the snow made the tracks impassable, the near-starvation of the townspeople, and the courage of Almanzo Wilder and Cap Garland, who ventured out on the open prairie in search of a cache of wheat that no one was even sure existed.

Local oral history and research by Wilder's biographers also indicate that Almanzo and Cap traveled about 12 miles (19 km) south of De Smet to find the wheat, not 20 as she states in the novel.

Virginia Kirkus had handled Wilder's debut novel Little House in the Big Woods for Harper & Brothers as its children's book editor from 1926 to 1932.

She would only approve if she could read over the whole script, however, she noticed that there was added fictitious material and turned it down saying that she wanted no fiction whatsoever and that there were too many inaccuracies.