Happy Birthday, O.E.

From Minnesota Public Radio:

It is the birthday of Norwegian-American novelist Ole Edvart Rölvaag, born in a fishing village on Donna Island, Helgeland, Norway (1876). He was a very good fisherman, but he immigrated to South Dakota. He learned English, enrolled in St. Olaf College in Minnesota, and later became a professor there. He wrote about Norwegian settlers on the Dakota prairies in his huge novel, Giants in the Earth (1927).

I pass this along in tribute to my Norwegian grandfather, Ernest Bratlie, Sr., whose favorite book was Giants in the Earth. My mom remembers him having a leather-bound edition, one which we have regretfully never located. I've got a paperback copy at home which is eventually due for a re-read as background for rewriting the farming scenes in my novel-in-hiatus, Eden.