Giant

Giant

GIANTS IN THE EARTH-O. E. Rolvaag-Harper ($2.50). Over the wide grass lands the wind walked, making cat's-paws on a green ocean. Beret sat on the prairie schooner, staring at immensity, feeling the nostalgia that comes to those who voyage on desert places, land or water. Her husband, Per Hansa, walked through the waves, talking to the horses, to Olamund, their son. Beret looked at the dry and lonely sea. Even after the arrival in Dakota Territory, remembering her Minnesota village, she felt this loneliness closing around her. The sky and the green floor made no familiar prisoning niche. Their infinity disregarded her. Nothing she did could influence or change them. She watched her son growing up, her husband fighting against the earth. More immigrants sail their prairie schooners westward, and Beret prays, "Almighty God, show mercy now to the children of men. Let not these folks be altogether lost in this trackless wilderness." For herself, this is an unanswered prayer. Her children, her husband, make the prairie theirs; but Beret is lost in a trackless wilderness. The Author, for 21 years professor at St. Olaf College, in Minnesota, has written many books. A Norwegian himself, son of a fisherman, he wrote in his own language. Now, translating his latest work into strong, thick-muscled English, he tells the story of his own acclimatization. More than this, he brings to notice a new school of American letters. In Minnesota many another Norwegian has written books about America in his own tongue, sending them to Norway for publication.