Giants in the Earth

“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