The Boat of Longing

Norwegian-born Rolvaag emigrated to the United States at age 20 in 1896. Following a college education in Minnesota and Norway, he began the writing and teaching career (at St. Olaf College, Minnesota) that was to bring him fame as an interpreter of the Norwegian-American cultural experience. Rolvaag's understanding of immigrant life on the show more prairie was the source of novels that have given his name a solid place in both national literatures. His first, highly autobiographical work, The Third Life of Per Smevik (1912), was published under the pseudonym Paal Morck. Rolvaag's masterpiece, Giants in the Earth (1924--25), is his own translation, with Lincoln Colcord, of the first two of four novels dealing with the family of Per Hansa. Peder Victorious (1928) and Their Fathers' God (1931) complete the epic, although these two novels are less compelling. show less