Giants in the Earth by O.E, Rolvaag

"There were giants in the earth in those days...." Genesis 6:4

O.E. Rolvaag took his title from the Bible, telling a story about the very early Norwegian pioneers to the Dakotas, who were indeed giants--not in size, but in courage, determination, and endurance through extremely adverse circumstances.

Four family groups have already made the voyage from Norway to America, finally ending up in Minnesota, when they are stricken with the fever to "go west" where good land and opportunities beckon. The story focuses mainly on Per Hansa and his wife Beret, as they face unimaginable obstacles in making a home and surviving on the open, flat, treeless prairie. Indeed, the prairie, with its featureless landscape and extremes of weather, is one of the main characters; Rolvaag writes, "But more to be dreaded than this tribulation was the strange spell of sadness which the unbroken solitude cast upon the minds of some....It is hard for the eye to wander from sky line to sky line, year in and year out, without finding a resting place."

The settlers, living in sod houses, face savage summer storms, winters that last from October through April with 20-foot snow drifts, a pestilence of grasshoppers, a lack of medical help, toil from daybreak to dark, a lack of sufficient food and fuel--and still they survive. "They threw themselves blindly into the Impossible, and accomplished the Unbelievable."

This is a beautiful book. Originally written in Norwegian, it was translated by the author himself, with the help of some who were more proficient in English. Not restricting himself to plot and descriptions of the many challenges faced, he focuses on the psychological aspects of his characters and the human costs of building a new nation. If a better book about pioneering in America has been written, I have not read it.