Their Father's God

Fortælling om norske nykommere i Amerika #4

by O.E. Rølvaag

Originally published in the Nordlandsk dialect of northern Norway. CORRECT TITLE IS: Their Fathers' God.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literature, Classics, Religion

338 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1931

About the author

Ole Edvart Rølvaag was born in the family's cottage in a small fishing village on the island of Dønna, in the far southern district of Nordland county, Norway. Dønna, one of the largest islands on the northern coast of Norway, is situated about five miles from the Arctic Circle. He was born with the name Ole Edvart Pedersen, one of seven children of Peder Benjamin Jakobsen and Ellerine Pedersdatter Vaag. The settlement where he was born had no official name, but was referred to as Rølvaag, the name of a narrow bay on the northwestern point of the island where the fishermen kept their boats. At 14 years of age Rølvaag joined his father and brothers in the Lofoten fishing grounds. Rølvaag lived there until he was 20 years of age, and the impressions he received during the days of his childhood and his young manhood endured with him throughout his life.[2]

An uncle who had emigrated to America sent him a ticket in the summer of 1896, and he traveled to Union County, South Dakota to work as a farmhand. He settled in Elk Point, South Dakota, working as a farmhand until 1898. With the help of his pastor, Rølvaag enrolled in Augustana Academy in Canton, South Dakota where he graduated in 1901. He earned a bachelor's degree from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota in 1905, and a master's degree from the same institution in 1910. He also had studied for some time at the University of Oslo.

Reviews

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1876, O.E. Rolvaag was born in a small fishing village in northern Norway about five miles from the Arctic Circle. In 1896, he emigrated to South Dakota to work on his uncle's farm. He later enrolled in St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1905, and becoming a professor of Norwegian literature at the school the following year. In 1910, he earned a master's degree at St. Olaf.

Two years earlier, he had become an American citizen and had married Jennie Marie Berdahl. They would have three sons and one daughter. One of the sons, Karl, would become governor of Minnesota in the 1960's.

All of Rolvaag's books were written and originally published in his native Norwegian language and were then translated into English. They were popular in both Norway and the United States.

He published the first of his six novels in 1912. But it was in 1927 that his masterpiece, Giants in the Earth, was translated and published in America. It is a classic study of the immigrant experience in America and even more so the classic book about the Norwegian immigrant experience.

It is a book about the reality of contending with the harsh elements that characterized the South Dakota plains -- drought, locust swarms, blizzards, and, especially for women, loneliness, isolation, and often despair. And the wind -- always the wind -- and the flat, treeless plain, where there was a

[b]right, clear sky over a plain so wide that the rim of the heavens cut down on it around the entire horizon. . . . Bright, clear sky, to-day, to-morrow, and for all time to come.

. . . And sun! And still more sun! It set the heavens afire every morning; it grew with the day to quivering golden light--then softened into all the shades of red and purple as evening fell. . . . Pure colour everywhere. A gust of wind, sweeping across the plain, threw into life waves of yellow and blue and green. Now and then a dead black wave would race over the scene . . . a cloud's gliding shadow . . . now and then. . . .

It was late afternoon. A small caravan was pushing its way through the tall grass. The track that it left behind was like the wake of a boat--except that instead of widening out astern it closed in again.

Yes, as in the rest of the West, life was harder for women. Men tended to be optimistic that whatever the obstacles might be, they could be overcome. And sometimes it was necessary for them to travel many miles to the nearest town in order to purchase necessary equipment and supplies. But the women remained at home to care for their children and tend the livestock and they rarely saw anyone outside of the family.

There are stories of how the monotony of this existence drove women out of their minds. And in one case in Giants in the Earth it does that very thing.

Two years later, a sequel, Peder Victorious: A Tale of the Pioneers Twenty Years Later, was published. Whereas Giants in the Earth was epic in scope, the sequel narrowed its focus. There were still occasional droughts and harsh winters, but because of the growth of population in the ensuing years the isolation and monotony had lessened as did the despair. The land had been conquered.

The great struggle now became one of how to become Americans. And an essential element of that struggle was the pain and dismay among the immigrants who resisted but could not prevent the Americanization of their first-generation children. This struggle is at the heart of the story of young Peder Holm and his Norwegian mother, Beret.

Two years after Peder Victorious, the third book of the trilogy was published. Their Fathers' God begins in the late 1890's and extends into the new century. The farmers of the South Dakota plains have to contend with a long drought and, like the rest of the country, with an economic depression. But there is another struggle, one that is much more deep-seated and more lasting than the others. It is the division that exists between two groups of immigrants, the Norwegian Lutherans and the Irish Catholics.

The two groups are able to live as accommodating neighbors as long as -- well, as long as each is able to maintain its own culture, including language, but especially religion, without any interference from the other; and as long as there is no intermarriage between Protestants and Catholics.

But there is that. Peder Holm, the young rebel from the second book, has married Susie Doheny, a devout Catholic. Peder thinks the Catholic religion is no more than myth and superstition and he probably could live with that except he and his young wife live on the farm and in the house owned by his mother, Beret, who is as devout in her Lutheran faith as her daughter-in-law is in her faith.

Peder, of course, has been raised in the Lutheran church, but in truth he opposes any organized religion. But he is caught in the middle. Soon his marriage is being severely tested. It is tested not only by drought and depression, but even more troublesome it is tested by family bickering, and maybe, as Susie believes, it is being tested by their father's god.

There might have been a fourth book in the series. In fact, the conclusion of Their Fathers' God would seem to point in that direction. But it was not to be. O.E. Rolvaag died the year that book was published. He was fifty-five years old.

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the final title in O.E. Rolvaag's trilogy about a Norwegian immigrant family in the Dakota Territory. Here we find Peder Victorious dealing with married life, his plans for the family farm, politics and religion. Especially religion and the way it influences the lives of the entire community. Whose God is the correct one to worship? Do we stay faithful to the God our fathers believed in or switch to a different one?Maybe even create our own?

It is not absolutely necessary to read Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie and Peder Victorious: A Tale of the Pioneers Twenty Years Later before reading this book, but I strongly recommend it. Rolvaag does not give any backstory details other than a footnote here and there which tells the reader to 'see Peder Victorious'. So unless you do read the first two titles, you will not fully understand the complex relationships between the characters in this one.

Peder is not a happy man here. His home life is full of tension, not at all the way he had expected it to be. There are secrets all around him, which eventually tear his world apart. The book ends with a shocking scene triggered by one of these secrets coming to light in a cruel way.

Rolvaag had planned to write a fourth volume here, which would have followed Peder into WWI. But he died before he could start on the book. This is truly a shame, for it leaves the reader with an emptiness nearly as big as the one Peder was left with. We can only wonder what he will do to cope.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Translated by Trygve M Ager. Biro inscription inside cover: 'Christmas 1991, from Bev'

Description: Susie Doheny, an Irish Catholic, and Peder Holm, a Norwegian Lutheran, fall in love and marry in South Dakota in the 1890s. Soon their marriage is tested by drought, depression, and family bickering. Susie believes they are being tested by their fathers' God.Peder blames Susie for the timidity of her beliefs; Susie fears Peder's pride and skepticism. When political antagonism grows between the Norwegian and Irish immigrant communities, it threatens to split their marriage.

Against a backdrop of hard times, crisscrossed by Populists, antimonopolists, and schemers, Rölvaag brings the struggle of immigrants into the twentieth century. In Giants in the Earth the Holm family strained to wrest a homestead from the land. In Peder Victorious the American-born children searched for a new national identity, often defying the traditions their parents fought to uphold. In Their Fathers' God, Rölvaag's most soul-searching novel, the first-generation americans enter a world of ruthless competition in the midst of scarcity.

Opening: 1: "A Cloud Like A Man's Hand": No hope for rain tonight either. Oh, no, it took pains to stay away, wherever it was.

Only now I notice - this is the final book in a trilogy. Nevermind, I shall get a good enough sample of Rølvaag's writing to see if he is worth looking into further.

  Fifty miles from water
One hundred miles from wood
To hell with South Dakota
We're leaving you for good

Mainly, I wanted to see how this Norwegian experience compares to The Emigrants, four books on the Swedish migration to the New World.

Relentless side taking, factions and cliques in first generation hardscrabble lives. Epic sweeping family saga that is nicely written.

It was amusing to read this whilst also encountering Wexford's The Babes in the Wood, how I would have loved to tip some of the floods from latter into former!

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

After dutifully posting on Giants in the Earth and Peder Victorious, I felt obliged to finish this trilogy. Which as it'd been designed for a fourth and concluding volume never finished, felt like a series that'd been cancelled by the head honchos prematurely, as Their Father's God does stop, no less than paired previous seasons, suddenly. Not necessarily overdramatically, however, as Rölvaag's style's stately...

That being said, this opens in spirited fashion. Reminiscent of a Wizard of Oz on the Great Plains, if north of Kansas. Mr Jewell asks for $700 (about $28k today) for "milking the atmosphere" of South Dakota, to bring down rain on the 1894 drought, which devastated crops and created economic chaos.

The tension permeates past dim physical prospects. Susie Doheny's dissolute dad needs care. By the intervention of well-meaning Fr. Williams, who Peder can't tolerate, she tends to her father and her infant, under Catholic influence. While Peder seethes back on the farm, full of Robert Ingersoll and Tom Paine's atheism. Their spats alternate with making up, in episodes, true to life, albeit humdrum.

This sets up a "mixed marriage" clash (being that back then and awhile after, the Church required a child to be raised in that faith no matter what, however disregarded for the sake of conjugal harmony by many!). I found this depiction intermittently interesting, more than the admission of the Dakotas to the Union, or inter-Lutheran factions feuding of the preceding volume, but Rölvaag, despite a focus that better reveals character development, still sticks us with Beret, Peder's mother, a gloomy figure.

What works itself out follows conventions. Peder seeks a godless utopia, through the Republican Party (it's a century and at least a quarter ago, as the GOP battles Populist and Democratic foes), Susie faces a second pregnancy, Beret faces mortality, and the aftermath of the religious and ethnic loyalties vs the "melting pot" model generates plenty of conversation, if again a less compelling plot or dynamic.

[Shelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of the book was excellent and completed Rolvaag's trilogy beginning with the well known Giants in the Earth. The story is set within a marriage between a Norwegian Lutheran and an Irish Catholic in late 19th century South Dakota and the struggles therein. The ending slowed things down to a leaky faucet drip primarily because of the political squabbling in the final chapters, reminding me too much of today's political environment. I did like the political quote from our protagonist as he was running for office, "Hatred of one party for another never brings forth good fruit. It keeps you rooting about in the mire; it warps your minds and makes you see cross-eyed. It's the devils own way of getting his work done...". Not much has changed there.

[Charlie George · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a moving but lesser-known tale following the classics Giants in the Earth and Peder Victorious set on the high South Dakota steppe during the depression of the 1890's.

Scant attention is given to describing the spartan scenery or meager lifestyle. Instead, the story is a deeply emotional look at the issues plaguing a family from different religions. They endure not only economic hardship, but drought, injury, and death of loved ones. Primarily, they struggle to tolerate one anothers' religious beliefs, customs, and culture. This is in no way helped by their families, the townfolk, or clergy, many of whom foment the strife at every turn.

It is only through selfless strength of character and abiding love that they survive the tumult physically or spiritually. Another important element is political strife sweeping the community, which inspires Peder to seek political office as he discovers his gift for leadership and good old fashioned plain-speaking.

These themes have been explored many times since, but there is a strong flavor of originality in Rolvaag, both because it was written and set earlier, and because the protagonists are first generation Americans, some of the first to carve out an egalitarian identity, finding a way to blend and respect different cultures and beliefs. In so doing, they pioneer America not only geographically, but also socially.

The book illuminates the problems faced by believers in different faiths, even Christian ones. While I normally disdain the misguided imprudence of such beliefs, this story was told with such care and detail that I found myself invested in their lives, longing for their happiness and well-being.

[T.J. Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Their Fathers' God" is the concluding novel of the trilogy following the Holm family - Norwegian immigrant pioneers who, in the late 1800s, settle in what becomes South Dakota. I love Rolvaag's writing so much. It is powerful and rich and pulls you into each character's emotions so vividly.

"Their Fathers' God" follows the first couple of years of Peder's marriage to Susie Doheny, an Irish immigrant, and the difficulties they face. They experience terrible drought; illness and miscarriage; the death of Peder's mother. But the most dificult issue becomes their "mixed religion" (Lutheran and Catholic) marriage, which is looked at with suspicion by the community and their own families and eventually becomes a huge hurdle in their ability to understand each other. I felt like Rolvaag depicted the early years of a young couple's marriage really well - the passion combined with the frustrations and misunderstandings that are inevitable when two people begin living together for the first time. Those first few years of marriage are not easy even when you don't have all these other religious and community pressures bearing down on you! And I feel like Rolvaag beautifully captured that strange pressure cooker of love and stress.

The ending is not happy. It is something of a cliffhanger. Evidently, Rolvaag had planned to write another novel about Peder but died shortly after "Their Fathers' God" was published. A true loss to literature! I dearly would love to know what he had planned for Peder (and Susie's) future.

Overall, I found the whole trilogy lovely,thougthful, fascinating and extremely satisfying and would recommend it to anyone who loves pioneer and prairie literature!

[Mariangel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I still like Rolvaag's writting and the book is hard to put down, but Peder was not the most sympathetic character even in Peder Victorious: A Tale of the Pioneers Twenty Years Later, and now he is even less so. The main struggle in this book is his mixed marriage, and at the end some politics.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rølvaag’s final novel in his trilogy ends with a whimper. Peder is an adult living as a second-generation American on the farm built by his mother and father. He battles anti-science quacks, religious frauds, and populist political cranks who create divisions in the region, mostly along ethnic and religious lines. While this seems like a compelling idea that might draw on the now-termed “revolt from the village movement" of the previous decade (see Masters, Lewis, Anderson, et al.), the novel struggles to hold its narrative drive, instead devolving into a series of episodic incidents centered on Peder’s marriage problems with his Irish wife, Susie. By the halfway point, I was pretty much over the soap opera subplot of Susie and Beret (Peder’s mother) battling each other with competing baptisms of Peder’s son. The constant bickering among these three sullies what otherwise could have been a decent novel, although Peder’s characterization as the rational, nontheistic, anti-populist, Freethinking hero has seen better treatments by other American writers in the modernist period.

As for its place in the trilogy as a whole, the novel reinforces a hunch I had when reading Peder Victorious: that Rølvaag’s trilogy is really about matriarch Beret. She is the glue that holds together these three novels -- an ironic statement, considering her erratic mental state is the irritant that so often threatens to disrupt life in the family. Her death near the end of the novel is both a relief and a disappointment, leaving the final 100 pages to be mostly anti-climactic. This is also a bit ironic, since those events chronicle the rise of Peder’s political career, which could have been (and probably should have been) the meat of this novel, instead of being relegated to the final thirty pages.

Despite my disappointment with this novel, I still enjoyed the trilogy to the point where I might seek out Rølvaag’s earlier work somewhere down the road.

[gaudeo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fitting finale to the trilogy of the Great Plains that began with Giants in the Earth, this book follows the adulthood of second-generation Norwegian immigrants who settle in South Dakota. Each book centers on a fateful conflict; this one is on the ever-present friction between the beliefs (or, rather, the nonbelief) of the protagonist, Peder Holm, and his Irish Catholic wife, Susie. As ever, Rolvaag breathes life into his characters, no less the women than the men. I wholeheartedly recommend the series to anyone with an interest in the immigrant experience, the journeys of the pioneers, and lovers of the Great Plains.

[Marie Ash-Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book; interesting study in human nature. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a good story; this one happens to be about the Scandinavian immigrant experience.

[Rachelfm · Rating 5 out of 5]

A satisfying end to this under-appreciated trilogy. OE Rolvaag is an American author who should be much more wildly read, studied, and appreciated.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

This series is the Game of the Thrones of Scandi-merican frontier Naturalism: nothing turns out the way you want it to. I like this, although the reading is a sad, frustrating endeavor. I don't like stories that pretend the world is an orderly place. The world is not an orderly place.

I struggle with the role of women, to an extent. The key female characters in this text uniformly cause the downfall of the heroic, sympathetic male characters. The men provide life-sustaining optimism and energy, as well as work and ingenuity; the women cling to superstition and, to compensate for the lack of equality caused by their own weakness, use that superstition as an excuse to destroy men. Within the context of the books, it rings true, and finding sympathy for these characters is a challenge, but the reality is that they are products of their environs: having been deprived of choice and power, they find alternate routes to match their husbands.

I think what troubles me is how much truth I see in the depiction; it shines a light on power imbalances in society, how they create an environment whereby those socialized into being lesser become lesser, and perpetuate it, and on and on, often in the most destructive ways. Within the confines of Rolvaag's series, it is superstition and imagined bonds to higher beings and past lives, emphasizing how frantically the desperate and uneducated will cling to any sense of order and power when faced with a world (such as the unsettled Dakotas) that offers little acknowledgment of the plight of woman and man.

When caught in a rounded story, the imagination drawn in as if it were your own life, it is hard to fight the biases of the narrative, and essential to wonder whether the biases are your own, or a temporary insight, caught from the narrative. I wonder how often we fail to ponder this while engaging with art and media.

[Cindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would like to tell the author could you write an ending, please. I like resolution. I stayed up late to see if the rainmaker could make it rain for 700 dollars. Peder wanted to run him out of town for being a fake. There is no ending here, on to the next crisis. This book read like short stories put together in a 300 page novel. This is the last book in the prairie saga that started with Giants in the Earth. Peder and Hans are grown men. Beret was their mother. She went crazy for awhile and got better. In this book she is an elderly lady living on her farm with Peder and his wife. I fell in love with Beret. She was the voice of wisdom Peder should have listened to. There were so many conflicts it was hard to keep track. The community faced drought, hardship, falling market prices and political battles. The stereotypes might upset some people in today's world. Peder married an Irish Catholic. The Irish are typecast as dirty and slovenly in their housework. The Catholics were referred to as black artists. Beret said you don't mix wheat and potatoes in the same bin. At first I thought it was awful, but she knew Peders marriage was in trouble from the start. He was mean and abusive to his wife. Religion took up too much of the book. Peder had no time for God and forbid Susie to practice her faith. I was scared for her life, especially when she had their son secretly baptized in the Catholic Church. The ending was scary, it came to final blows. I wondered how much abuse the poor woman could take.

[Bob Peterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this last book of the trilogy before the second book. I knew it was wrong to do, but I did it anyway, guiltily. I figured at worst it was a venial sin. That small voice of conscience kept nagging at me but did not keep me awake at night.

This was a window book for me even though I am Norwegian. It help me understand my grandparents a little better and what they must’ve gone through when coming over here and having children who adapted to the new culture and language much more than they did.

So here we catch up with Peter, now married and with the child, where as he was only a small boy in giants in the earth. I am looking forward to the middle book of the trilogy to see how he got from here from there. Either way, lots of action about the church and politics and clashes between cultures. And of course, the friction between families and within families as values clash.

[Sherry Elmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot, although not as much as Giants in the Earth.

Peder Holm has a lot of his father in him—he is a dreamer, a planner, a hard worker, and very creative. He also has a lot of his mother's moodiness and unpredictability. In this final book of the trilogy, Peder, the Norwegian-American Lutheran, has done something scandalous by marrying the Catholic Irish Susie.

Catholic-Lutheran marriage was something looked down upon as recently as 55 years ago when my parents married—when Peder and Susie married in South Dakota in the 1890's, it was unheard of in their community, and would prove to be too big a strain to their marriage. Or was it their opposing faiths that divided them after all?

[John Benson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the third book in Rolvaag's GIANTS IN THE EARTH trilogy and for me, the least likeable of all three books. Peder is now married to Susie, a Lutheran married to a Catholic. They live with Peder's mother, Beret, who is just as devout a Lutheran as Susie is in her Catholic faith. Peder ends up continually denigrating her for her faith. The religious battles of that time predate the inter-familial political battles of current times. I found Peder hard to like in this book (though like Beret and Peder, I am, also, Lutheran). At times, he could be very kind to his wife, but at other times, he can be exceptionally cruel, right up to the end. The book is written well and the characters come through fully, but I found the book unsatisfying in the end.

[Les · Rating 2 out of 5]

My Original Notes (1997):

OK, but not as good as Giants in the Earth. Rolvaag spent the entire book showing his readers how the conflict of an interfaith marriage can lead to destruction of that marriage. It was the Irish Catholic vs. Lutherans. Constant problems arose between the couple and they acted so juvenile throughout their marriage. I found the book boring and tiresome.

My Current Thoughts:

I must have been bound and determined to try the third in this series, in spite of not enjoying Peder Victorious (#2) as much as Giants in the Earth (#1).

[Marianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book but, and this will sound odd, I didn't really like any of the characters. They were all too stubborn for my taste. They did silly things that mature adults generally wouldn't do. They didn't communicate well with one another -- perhaps a sign of the times in which they lived. The parts about conflict of religion and politics were more interesting to me than the characters themselves. Though the story takes place in the final years of the 19th century, the religious and political struggles were familiar -- the same biases, judgments, and ignorance slamming up against rational thought and reasoned discussion to turn people against one another. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Would I read it again? Strange to say, I might! It is well-written in its own way. If you enjoy stories full of angst, this is for you.

[Megan Fotheringham · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's rare for me to find a book that I am thoroughly engaged with throughout the whole story, especially those with simple, somewhat mundane plots. But with this, I was entranced. The whole Giants In the Earth series seems to have gone relatively under the radar and I highly recommend them. For me each book got better and better and I absolutely loved this last one.

[Lynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Religion divides...oh my, how it divides.

As a holder of a couple of theology degrees, I found this quite interesting...

[Karen Mullen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was good to follow the rest of the story, but I can't say it was a compelling piece to read.

[Maria Mohler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Profoundly sad.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable book.

Certainly this appeals to me on many levels. As a person of Scandinavian descent, I'm enjoying reading books which appeal to my heritage. As a Scandinavian Lutheran who has married an Irish Catholic, I was able to view the relationship, particularly the religious discussions, with understanding and empathy. Certainly the times are different now, and more such 'mixed' marriages have taken place, but it was not particularly common among the immigrants of the 19th century.

What struck me most was the incredible passion that Susie and Peder had for each other. They did, indeed love one another deeply, but it was their respective faiths that kept interfering in their lives.

I got indignant when the priest interfered and created one of the larger rifts in the marriage. I was angry with Peder's stubbornness and his audacity to teach all things religion. Their problem was obvious to the casual, modern reader ... their lack of talking. Rather than discuss religion, they avoided the subject or Peder took a know-it-all tone. The instances when they were able to talk about religion congenially, and when Peder told Susie that she should take the carriage in to go to her church, showed glimpses of promise between them.

Though Susie seemed to slide into a depression that become a mental illness, at the heart of their problems was religion. The change in farming, the political ring, the illness and death in family ... it was all solveable. The religion brought back deeper, long-term harm that would not be overcome.

A fascinating read. Highly recommended. Reminds me of Cather's O Pioneers (for the immigrant problems) and Flaubert's Madame Bovary (for the lack of communication in a marriage) with dogma.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it's safe to say that virtually no one reads Ole Rolvaag anymore, but he had his shining moments in the 1920s and 1930s, writing out of his own experience about the Norwegian emigrants who pioneered many of the farms in what was then the Dakota territory in the late 1800s.

This book is the third in his trilogy of the Holm family. By the time of this book, the family patriarch has died, and his son, Peder Holm, is a vigorous young farmer with a new family and new ideas.

He has married Susie Doheny, an Irish Catholic girl, and it is the clash of her religion with his Lutheranism, mixed with his freethinking ways, that sets up most of the tension in the book.

It is hard to imagine today the intensity of the conflicts that could occur over what faith a baby should be baptized into, but Rolvaag makes the struggle utterly real, while also giving a real sense of the challenge of farming in the great open plains with their erratic weather, long distances and the febrile politics of the day.

I don't want to print a spoiler alert, so suffice it to say that the story ends in mid-air, leaving you desperately wanting a sequel, but I'm not sure there was one.

Though it was written 80 years ago, the novel still has great vitality and freshness, and I encourage you to give him a try. His masterwork is supposed to be the first novel of the trilogy, "Giants of the Earth," but I can recommend this one without hesitation.

[Lori L (She Treads Softly) · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you haven't read the previous two books, Giants in the Earth and Peder Victorious and plan to in the future, do not read this review.

Their Fathers' Gods is, like Peder Victorious, a Norwegian novel translated into English thus, as Agar, the translator notes, some of the actual mood -art- of the original is lost. This is the last book Rolvaag wrote featuring the Holms family. In this novel he tackles the mixed marriage of Catholic Susie and Lutheran Peder, as well as the political antagonism between the two groups, Irish Catholic and Norwegian Lutheran, in South Dakota. What is surprising in many ways is how universal the themes in these last two Rolvaag novels have been. Even today we struggle with the question of immigrants becoming Americanized, especially in speaking English. While there are many mixed marriages of different faiths today, there is still an underlying hurdle that must be crossed for them to succeed. Once these different religious beliefs are woven together with opposing political views, with various clergy fully participating, the outcome is bound to be negative. In the end we are never told if Peder achieves either happiness or success. He has been truthfully told he will not have both in his life.
Very Highly Recommended for those reading all three Rolvaag books. http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/

[Guy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another classic from the author of Giants in the Earth, this carries forward the story of Norwegian farmers in the 1890s Dakotas. Set against the backdrop of the 1896 US presidential election, a young farm couple struggle against challenges they set themselves (a mixed marriage in culture, language, and religion) and ones beyond their control (drought, falling farm prices). The tension in the book seems to me (no spoiler, I think) whether their inner resources of character are great and strong enough to withstand the forces that pull them apart.

[Marie Ash-Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book; not as much as Giants in the Earth but almost. Mr. Rolvaag is one of my favorite authors and I have to rate almost all of his books five stars. Great historical novel of the Scandinavian immigrant experience in our great prairie staates - a subject close to my heart. Mr. Rolvaag is the best chronicler of their experience that I have read. It can also be read as a study of in human contradiction.

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

Their Fathers' God is a story about a young, married couple in 1890s South Dakota who have an interdenominational marriage - Lutheran and Catholic. Can their marriage and love survive despite the contention between the groups culturally and politically?

My father-in-law suggested I read this book. I suppose I'd rate it 2.5 stars, although I was impressed that in some ways it was fairly current. Overall, though, I found the book to be dull.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Final book in the trilogy.