The novel describes struggle of Norwegian settlers in eastern South Dakota, based on the actual lives of the author's parents in law. The settlers make progress, then face further problems, such as grasshoppers eating their wheat. In the end, the protagnist freezes to death in a snow storm and his wife struggles with sanity. It is in the same general area and era as Laura Ingalls Wilder's "By the shores of silver lake" and "The long winter", the latter describing the same winer of 1880-1881 in which Rolvaag's Per Hansa dies.