"The fullest, finest, and most powerful novel that has been written
about pioneer life in America."--The Nation
O. E. Rolvaag's classic novel of a family of Norwegian settlers in the
Great Plains--a vivid and intimate portrait of the nineteenth-century
immigrant experience and the exploration of America
Based in part on Ole Edvart Rølvaag's own recollections as well of those
of his wife's family who were immigrant homesteaders, Giants in the
Earth is the riveting story of a Norwegian family forging a new life
amid the harsh, desolate climate of the Dakota Territory. Rølvaag
recounts the hardships they endured on the high prairie--blizzards,
locust storms, poverty, hunger, loneliness, homesickness, and culture
shock--as well as their simple joys, culminating in a magnificent epic
that bridges Norwegian culture and the history of the American dream.
"A moving narrative of pioneer hardship and heroism. . . . The
background of the boundless Dakota prairie, with its mysterious
distances and its capacity for evil, is painted with alternating beauty
and grimness." --The Atlantic