Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie

"Giants in the Earth" is a novel by Norwegian-American author Ole Edvard Rølvaag, telling a story of a Norwegian family who struggles to make a new life as pioneers in the Dakota territory. The novel follows the grim realities of pioneering and the gloomy fatalism of the Norse mind among the depictions of snow storms, locusts, poverty, hunger, loneliness, homesickness, the difficulty of fitting into a new culture, and the estrangement of immigrant children who grow up in a new land. In offering this novel to the English-reading public, I feel the need of an explanation. Book I of "Giants in the Earth" was published in Norway (Aschehoug & Co.) as a separate volume in October, 1924; Book II, one year later.