O. E. Rolvaag was born April 2, 1876, on Donna Island off the coast of Norway, where he lived until he was twenty Despite an early and voracious appetite for literature, both Norwegian classics and writers such as Charles Dickens and James Fenimore Cooper, Rolvaag seemed destined to be a fisherman. A violent storm at sea in which several of his friends lost their lives was a defining experience for him. Unwilling to face the prospect of the hazards and desolation of life on the North Atlantic, Rolvaag opted instead to emigrate to America, asking his uncle in Elk Point, Minnesota., to lend him money for the passage.

His first two years in America he worked as a farmhand. But farming was scarcely more appealing to R6lvaag than fishing, and he decided to further his education. He studied first at Augustana Academy in Sioux Falls, South Dakota...