Giants on the Earth

Rolvaag's classic is a treasure. Rolvaag's characters are unbelievably rich and psychologically deep: Beret, the troubled homesteader's wife, Pers Hansa, her resourceful and cunning husband, their solid neighbor Han Olsa and his able and gentle wife Sorrine, the ebullient and politically crafty Syvert, and his wife Kjersti, who longs for a child she will never have but adopts her little community instead. These core characters and many others give lessons in the mysteries of the Universe, not the least of which are the fine line between piety and insanity, the contradictory emotions that form the bond between a mother and child, and man's lust for a place of his own. Ole Rolvaag was quiet professor at St. Olaf's college with a typical emigrant's bio, but in that mind of his, wonderful and horrible tales raged that invested the flat prairies of the Dakota Territory with fearful storms, mischievous trolls, plagues of Biblical proportion and daily struggles of a man and a woman in conflict in a land that shows no mercy. I understand that this book is sometimes assigned as mandatory reading for high schoolers. In a way that's a shame; this is a book for grownups who know where the characters have been and are going.