Peder Victorious: A Tale of the Pioneers Twenty Years Later

I stumbled onto "Giants in the Earth" years ago and fell in love with it immediately. It was great to find this sequel and Iwas delighted to be able to continue the story. Beautifully written.

After reading "Giants in the Earth" I was anxious to continue the story of the Holm family. I rushed to pick up "Peder Victorious" and its sequel "Their Father's God" and again, I was not dissapointed."Peder Victorious" chronicles the childhood of the youngest Holm child, Peder, who is bound for greatness. Through his tribulations with love and sex, to his conflicts with authority this novel brings out all the strife of Americanization.Perhaps the best built conflict and consequently the most frustrating, is that between Peder and his mother. His mother becomes religiously fanatical at times and consequently drives Peder from the church."Peder Victorious" is a powerful novel, written by a brilliant author. It is too bad that I can't read Norwegian, because I'm sure that these novels are even greater in their original language. I would strongly recommend "Peder Victorious" for anyone that is interested in the conflicts of a widening generation gap, but also for those seeking simply a superbly written novel that is entertaining to the end - Enjoy!

This book is the sequel to "Giants in the Earth," an engrossing adventure story about the settlement of the South Dakota prairie. Peder turned out to be entirely different, more cerebral, slower, less exhuberant. I read Giants to learn what my ancestors experienced. It turned out to be a truly significant and exciting novel, but I didn't learn much about the Norwegian-American experience. I picked up Peder to discover what happened to the characters in Giant. Instead, I gained a deeper understanding of the joys and agonies that my family must have experienced as they lost their Norwegian language and culture, becoming Americans.Peder starts off slowly. Revolving around the title character, it uses Peder Holm's experience as an adolescent as a device to illustrate the changes and conflicts within the Norwegian-American community. As he becomes more mature, and his dilemmas become more adult, the story becomes more engrossing.I have to admit that I set this one down for about a month before finishing it, but I'm ready to read the next one. In many ways, it is a more significant novel than Giants. It was moving and thought-provoking. Great novels are not always an easy read--this one is worth a bit of patience through Peder's childhood years.

"Giant's in the Earth" ended with Per Hansa going off into the snow storm. This novel picks up on his son (who was only 4 when his father disappeared) and his growing years and also fills in the gaps that one had to assumed happened in the first book. A very powerful story regarding a Norwegian boy growing up in America. I only wish that Rolvaag extended it a few more chapters. Peder Victorious, all though it moved slowly at times, was well worth the reading!