This book tells the story of Selina Peake DeJong who was orphaned at age 19 when her father (a professional gambler) died in Chicago in 1888. He had taught her that all of life's experiences, even the bad ones, are part of a grand adventure, so she bravely faced her future by first heading off to become a teacher in a rural Illinois school, and was enchanted by the beauty she saw in the place. She became disillusioned by the adventure when, years later, she was still there, married to a Dutch truck farmer and living on a poor and unproductive farm. Her husband had refused to take any suggestions for improvements from her, so after he died she began implementing some of her ideas. She managed to support herself and her son, Dirk. The farm flourished and she was even able to send Dirk to college in Chicago and then to Cornell to study architecture - pleased that he seemed to be developing an appreciation for things of beauty. Construction projects dried up after WWI and Dirk got a job at an investment firm selling bonds, where he thrived and began to become modestly wealthy. Selina, however, wanted him to return to architecture - a profession with a soul. In the way of all young adults, Dirk believed that his mother didn't understand what was important in the modern world and ignored her. Not until later, when he met and fell in love with an artist, did he begin to reconsider his opinion on the subject. But was he too late?

This book won the Pulitzer Prize when it was published in 1924. It deserves it. I read most of it in a singe day because I was unable to keep myself from picking it up just to read a few more lines. This would be a great book club book. ( )

Selina DeJong spent her childhood traveling the US with her father, who made his living as a gambler in the late 1800s. He instilled in her a sense of independence so strong that after his death Selina decided to make her way as an independent woman, finding work as a teacher in a Dutch farming community on the Illinois prairie. She boarded with a family, and despite being a fish out of water she gradually drew closer to the family and especially their oldest son, Roelf. Eventually Selina married a local man, Purvis DeJong and had a son, Dirk (known by his nickname, "Sobig," taken from a game Selina often played with him as a baby). Over the years Selina transformed from city girl to farm wife, and exerted strong influence over the development of both the farm and her son.

The pursuit of beauty is a prominent theme in this book:
"It's beauty!" Selina said then, almost passionately ... "Yes. All the worth-while things in life. All mixed up. Rooms in candle-light. Leisure. Colour. Travel. Books. Music. Pictures. People -- all kinds of people. Work that you love. And growth -- growth and watching people grow. Feeling very strongly about things and then developing that feeling to - to make something fine come of it." ... She threw out her hands in a futile gesture. "That's what I mean by beauty. I want Dirk to have it." (p. 146).

On arrival in High Prairie, Selina is struck by the beauty of cabbages and other produce, much to the amusement of the hard-working local farmers. She finds beauty in most aspects of her life, and works hard to instill in Dirk that same appreciation of, and wonder for, beauty. Most of the time Dirk respectfully tolerates her chatter, seeing it as old-fashioned but endearing. But it's clear to the reader that Dirk is on his own journey to discover beauty through education, work, and relationships.

So Big won the Pulitzer Prize in 1925 and it's easy to see why. On one level, Selina's story is a compelling portrait of farm life at the turn of the 20th century, and Selina is an unusually strong woman for that era. Then Ferber weaves in additional characters and subplots to create a beautiful tapestry. Add to that the search for beauty in its many forms, and So Big becomes infused with meaning not found in many books. Highly recommended. ( )

Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction for 1925.

In 1889, Selina Peake, orphaned daughter of a sophisticated gambler who loves books, the theater, art, and life, takes up a teaching post in the Dutch farming country town of High Prairie, Illinois, 10 miles outside of Chicago. As the farmer with whose family she is to stay drives her out to the farm, Selina looks at the rows and rows of vegetables and exclaims "How beautiful the cabbages are!" Klas Poole, the stolid Dutch farmer, thinks she's crazy--cabbages are just cabbages, after all. But Selina responds to beauty wherever she finds it, and both the newness of her experience and what she sees in it soon charms almost all of the practical people among whom she lives and teaches. She is especially fond of Roelf Poole, Klas's sullen son, who responds eagerly to Selina's encouragement of his dreams of something different and to her little library. It isn't long before Selina falls in love with a young farmer, Pervus De Joong, marries him, moves on to his poor farm, and has a son, Dirk, whom she nicknames So Big. It's a hardscrabble farm but Pervus stubbornly refuses to adapt any method of farming other than those he learned from his father. Pervus dies suddenly, and Selina is left with a young son and a farm to run.

That's the plot of the first part of the book, which really is the back story, so to speak, for Selina's journey--her initial struggle to make the farm pay, her hopes for Sobig, and her continuing cheerful determination to take life as it comes and make the best out of it.

The latter part of the book center around Dirk, who is not a bad sort, but who is caught up in both the pre-and post-WWI feverish pursuit of money and the social status it brings. Always in the background is Selina, who combines both practicality and the insistence that success is not defined in terms of money but rather in fulfillment of one's abilities.

So Big echoes the major theme of another Pulitzer, winner, The Magnificent Ambersons, which follows the third generation of a wealthy family, and whose protagonist is caught up in the same period and with Dirk's same lack of understanding and shallow standards. The difference between the two is that Dirk really knows better, but makes the choice in favor of popularity and a woman he can not have but who lures him into a life that is basically meaningless.

Ferber is not alone, therefore, in her choice of themes--the emptiness of a life devoted purely to the pursuit of money and status, but she treats it somewhat differently from Tarkington. Whereas George Amberson was "to the manor borne", Selina's story is always there in rich detail--her life as a truck farmer's wife and then her struggle as owner; Dirk, who genuinely loves his mothr, almost but never quite cuts his ties with the solid Dutch tradition, rooted in the earth, from which he came. George Amberson didn't know better, and had to learn the hard way; Dirk does know better, but still has to learn in his own way, and in reality, in a more devastating manner than does George.

Ferber's prose is not sophisticated, consisting mainly of simple, declarative sentences but ones that are rich in detail from astute observation. Ferber writes convincingly of whole stratum of Illinois society--from shop girls and clerks, whose dialogue she captures convincingly, to Dutch farmers (again, with what certainly seems to be an accurate portrayal of speech patterns) to Haymarket traders to self-made millionaires to empty socialites to artists. The entire period of time--and her characters--come alive brillianttly; her finest prose, however, is reserved for Selina, who comes across as a cheerful but determined, strong woman, who, by her intelligence and willingness to meet all challenges head on, lives a fulfilled and satisfying life.

A magnificent example of American literature. Highly recommended. ( )

So Big is the story of Selina Peake DeJong, a city girl who, after being orphaned, moves to the country south of Chicago to be a school teacher. Selina has a high sense of adventure and beauty in the world, and the running joke among the farmers for a good part of the books is how Selina pronounced, upon seeing their produce in the fields, the beauty of their cabbages. Selina teaches until she meets and marries Pervus DeJong and gives birth to their son, Dirk. The title of the book comes from a game that Selina and Dirk played when he was a baby where she would say, "How big is baby?" and he would reply "Soooooooooo Big!" That became his pet name - used only by his mother. Selina becomes fascinated with the process of farming and progress in farming, and, when Pervus dies several years into their marriage, she takes pulls herself up by her bootstraps and takes control of the farm herself. Along the way Selina determines that Dirk will not be stuck on the farm like the other sons of farmers. She pushes him to seek knowledge and beauty. She wants him to know things, but she also wants him to appreciate the beauty in the world. The story continues with Dirk getting an education, moving to the city, and becoming wildly successful, all the while forgetting his mother's encouragement to appreciate the beauty in life.

I loved this book and read through it so quickly. I enjoyed the idea of a woman being stranded on a farm, forced to make her own way, and not sitting around feeling sorry for herself but making success and never losing her sense of adventure and beauty in the world. She is industrious, innovative, and wise. The story is also an interesting study in the way we raise children. How does one impart the ideas that one cherishes and loves into one's children without pushing them away from those exact things? In this Selina seems to fail, but the reader is left wondering if Dirk might have possibly caught on.

Again, we find that the acclaimed writers of fiction in the 1920s seem to all have a fascination with the development of the Midwest in common. It seems like it might become monotonous, but it hasn't yet for me. ( )

Selina Peake De Jong is a memorable literary heroine...strong, proud, devoted equally to her son Dirk and what she sees as "the pursuit of beauty." When fortune casts her as the wife of a young farmer in the vast midwestern plains, she tackles the role with customary zest.
The plot turns on her relationship with Dirk and his failure to fulfill his early promise. In Selina, Edna Ferber catches the hope and attention all parents lavish on their children and helps us understand why those we love are truly "hostages to fortune." SO BIG won the Pulitzer Prize and launched Edna Ferber on her career. (Book Description)

"A masterpiece...It has the completeness, [the] finality, that grips and exalts and convinces." --Literary Review

"A novel to read and to remember." --New York Times