Facing the Great Desolation
- Per Hansa, Hans Olsa, and Henry Solum head to the Sioux River looking for wood. But while they're gone, a huge caravan of Norwegian settlers passes through their land. Beret is the first to spot them and she feels compelled to run outside and tell them to turn back the way they came. In her mind, nothing lies out in this wilderness but misery and death.
- Soon enough, everyone has gathered in front of Tönseten's house. Everyone wants to convince the Norwegians to make their settlement bigger and more self-reliant. But it takes some convincing for Tönseten to get them to stay.
- Eventually, the Norwegian travelers do decide to stay. Tönseten considers this decision one of the biggest victories of his life, since he was the one to convince them to stick around. Now he and his friends will have a proper village.
- After the Norwegians have settled, it isn't long before Per Hansa decides he needs to make another trip into Sioux Falls. If we didn't know any better, we'd swear he was avoiding his wife.
- Store-Hans is disappointed, but his father tells him he must stay behind with his mother because Beret will have another baby soon.
- Just like that, Per Hansa sets out for Sioux Falls with his buddy Hans Olsa and Henry Solum.
- While they travel, they come across a farmer and wife who are working a field. They stop to chat and find out the couple is from Norway. They also find out that these people are in a bad way and don't have enough food. Per Hansa generously gives them food and says they can pay him back whenever they're able to. He also tells them he'll come back with more food as soon as he's able.
- The caravan arrives in the town of Worthington and Per Hansa travels door-to-door selling potatoes to people. While doing this, he gets invited in to dinner by an old widow. He is bowled over by how beautiful the inside of her house looks. She has used lime to make the entire inside of the house a pristine white. Hansa decides he'll use the same trick to make his house look beautiful, too.
- After the widow's, Per Hansa goes to the hardware man to buy some wood to make a crib for his new baby. He also buys plenty of lime to whitewash the inside of his house.
- The last thing Per Hansa and his friends buy is liquor. And since they've got it right in their hands, they decide to have a few drinks before they start heading back home. After all, those prairies can get pretty boring.
- Meanwhile, back at the settlement, Per Hansa's sons are bored and their mother is acting weird. Everything she says seems to come from a faraway place and she keeps forgetting the simplest little things.
- One day, the boys come running into the house saying that Tönseten has just killed a bear. Tönseten is so proud of his kill he carves it up and gives some meat to the boys for a stew. When they get home, they want to take out their father's old rifle and go looking for more bear to kill. But their mother worries about them and tells them to stay put.
- A few hours later, the family sits down to a nice bear stew. The trouble is that the meat isn't from a bear at all. It's from a badger. It looks like Tönseten was telling some tall tales. And it turns out that badger isn't very good to eat so everyone gets sick.
- Later on, Ole and Store-Hans get into a scrap because they're bored. Beret gets angry with them and beats them with a stick, which is something they've never seen her do before. The boys get scared and avoid her after that.
- When the stick finally breaks, Beret seems to recover her sense and remember where she is. She leaves the house and is gone a long time before she returns with wood to build a fire.
- That night, Beret thinks about how her family has been reduced to eating badger as though it were some kind of great meal. In the morning, she decides to start packing her things so that the family will be ready to leave the prairies forever when Per Hansa gets back.
- While packing, Beret has to sit down because her baby is kicking. Store-Hans finds out what she's doing and is devastated by the thought of leaving the prairie. In the world of Giants in the Earth , it's beginning to look like men love living on the prairie and the women… not so much.
- At this moment, Ole runs into the house shouting that Per Hansa has returned.
- That night at dinner, Per Hansa sees the marks on his sons from where Beret whipped them. But the boys lie about falling down and scratching themselves.
- Per Hansa spends his entire first night back knitting a huge net out of twine. No one really knows what its for, though, since the river is a long ways off.