How It All Goes Down
Welcome to 1873, Shmoopers. Per Hansa and his family are making the dangerous trek alone through the American Midwest to meet up with their buddies. The group plans on settling in the newly occupied territory of South Dakota. When they get there, Per Hansa is eager to get to work, but his wife Beret is deeply troubled by the vast and open prairies. Frankly, she feels some really bad mojo coming off this place.
One day, Per Hansa meets with a group of travelling Native Americans and helps to cure one of them from blood poisoning. He gets a free pony as a reward and decides that the Native Americans are good people. The same can't be said of the Irish, though. While walking, Per Hansa finds land stakes that belong to Irish settlers. But these stakes are on his friends' land, so Per Hansa pulls them out of the ground and burns them to destroy all evidence of the Irish people's land claim. When the Irish come back, a fight breaks out and the Norwegians win. So that's that. Unfortunately, Beret knows about the destroyed landmarks and loses a lot of respect for her husband. She is convinced that the devil lives on these prairies and has taken hold of Per Hansa.
Time goes by and all kinds of natural disasters pummel the Norwegian settlers. Long, snowy winters force them to look for firewood in dangerous conditions, while a plague of locusts ruins most of their crops for six summers in a row. Through it all, Per Hansa and his buddies continue to work the land and make a home for themselves on the desolate prairies. Beret thinks that they are spitting in God's face by living somewhere that He clearly doesn't want anyone to live. As the book unfolds, Beret becomes more and more convinced that her people are living in sin by staying on the prairies.
One day, a minister shows up in the Norwegian settlement. His first order of business is to christen all the babies and sanctify all the marriages. But once that's done, he turns his attention to Beret and her belief that her people are all doomed to hell. He makes a little progress with her, but not much. That winter, a man named Hans Olsa gets really sick after being out in the snow. It looks like he'll die, so Beret wants to do everything she can to make sure he doesn't burn in hell forever. She pesters her husband Per Hansa until he agrees to go into a snowstorm to get the minister. Unfortunately, Per Hansa dies on this trip.
The (depressing) End. Who wants to take a road trip to North Dakota?!