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Translated as Their Father’s God, this final novel from Rølvaag’s pen continues the story of Beret, Peder, and Susie and shows how Peder’s rejection of his cultural heritage affects every aspect of his life. The community they live in is divided and these divisions of language, customs, religion, and politics affect the marital relationship between Peder and Susie. The community suffers a drought, Susie suffers a miscarriage, Beret dies, Peder’s political ambitions fail, and in the end Susie takes their child and leaves him. In this novel Rølvaag portrays the development of a new society and gives an accurate description of the political shenanigans of the period.
The Song of the Shulamite is chapter four. Peder Victorious, the sequel to Rølvaag's massiveGiants in the Earth, continues the saga of the Norwegian settlers in the Dakotas. Here again, years later, are all the sturdy pioneers of the earlier novel, Rølvaag's "vikings of the prairie"—Per Hansa's Beret and their children, Syvert Tönseten and Kjersti, and Sörine. The great struggle against the land itself has been won. Now there is to be a second struggle, a struggle to adapt, to become Americans.
The development of the Spring Creek settlement in these years is manifested in the rebellious growing up of Peder Victorious. Peder is a beautiful and moving novel of youth and youth's self-discovery. It is the story, too, of Beret's pain and dismay at the Americanization of her children, what Rølvaag described as the true tragedy of the immigrants, who made their children part of a world to which they themselves could never belong.
Out of the inevitable conflict between the first-generation American and his still Norwegian mother, Rølvaag built a powerful novel of personal growth, guilt, and victory.
Peder Victorious, the sequel to Rølvaag's massiveGiants in the Earth, continues the saga of the Norwegian settlers in the Dakotas. Here again, years later, are all the sturdy pioneers of the earlier novel, Rølvaag's "vikings of the prairie"—Per Hansa's Beret and their children, Syvert Tönseten and Kjersti, and Sörine. The great struggle against the land itself has been won. Now there is to be a second struggle, a struggle to adapt, to become Americans.
The development of the Spring Creek settlement in these years is manifested in the rebellious growing up of Peder Victorious. Peder is a beautiful and moving novel of youth and youth's self-discovery. It is the story, too, of Beret's pain and dismay at the Americanization of her children, what Rølvaag described as the true tragedy of the immigrants, who made their children part of a world to which they themselves could never belong.
Out of the inevitable conflict between the first-generation American and his still Norwegian mother, Rølvaag built a powerful novel of personal growth, guilt, and victory.
Translated as Peder Victorious: A Tale of the Pioneers Twenty Years Later (1929). Peder Victorious continues the story of the Holm family of Giants in the Earth, concentrating on the youngest son, Peder, the only child born in America, and his relationship with his mother Beret, with the Norwegian-American church, with the surrounding community, and with the American school system. In the course of this novel Peder comes of age and ends up married to Irish-American Susie. In spite of its title the main character in the novel is Beret, showing how she becomes the best farmer in the community in spite of her struggle to adapt to the new culture and language.
I De Dage--: Fortælling om Norske Nykommere i Amerika, 1924 (In those days—A story about Norwegian immigrants in America) I De Dage--: Riket Grundlægges, 1925 (In those days—Founding the kingdom)
These two volumes were translated as Giants in The Earth: A Saga of the Prairie (1927). Gants 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 Rølvaag's personal experiences as an immigrant, and on the experiences of his wife’s family who had been immigrant homesteaders. The novel depicts 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.