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Content snapshot
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Violence
Some
Some violence in the frontier setting; winter danger and some conflict with settlers
Language
Barely any
Mild language in the literary translation register
Sexual Content
Barely any
Minimal sexual content
Substance Use
Barely any
Some drinking in the Norwegian settler community
Emotional Intensity
A lot
The devastating psychological portrait of Beret's religious anxiety and gradual mental breakdown — the prairie as a force that destroys what cannot adapt — is the novel's enduring and heartbreaking subject
What this book is about
Rølvaag's Norwegian-language masterwork (translated by the author with Lincoln Colcord) follows Per Hansa and his family as they settle the South Dakota prairie in the 1870s. Per Hansa is a visionary and builder; his wife Beret is slowly destroyed by the prairie's isolation and the scale of the sky. The novel's portrait of Beret's psychological breakdown is one of the most harrowing in American frontier literature. A major novel of the immigrant experience.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
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