Giants in the Earth

Originally published in 1927, Ole Edvart Rolvaag's 'Giants in the Earth' is a classic Norweigian-American immigration novel. Ole Edvart Rolvaag was a Norwegian-American novelist and professor who became well known for his writings regarding the Norwegian American immigrant experience. Giants in the Earth follows a Norwegian pioneer family's struggles with the land and the elements of the Dakota Territory as they try to make a new life in America. The book is based partly on Rolvaag's personal experiences as a settler, and on the experiences of his wife s family who had been immigrant homesteaders. The novel depicts snowstorms, 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. Giants in the Earth was turned into an opera by Douglas Moore and Arnold Sundgaard; it won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1951.