So Big - a novel by Edna Ferber
Winner of the 1924 Pulitzer Prize, So Big is widely regarded as Edna Ferber's crowning achievement.
A rollicking panorama of Chicago's high and low life, this stunning novel follows the travails of gambler's daughter Selina Peake DeJong as she struggles to maintain her dignity, her family, and her sanity in the face of monumental challenges.
Excerpt:
“Cabbages,” she said, “are beautiful” The big Dutch farmer who rode beside her on the bouncing buckboard wagon began to laugh. Such foolishness! Cabbages, he knew, were planted, grew into heads, and then became sauerkraut.
This new schoolteacher would bear watching. Writing, reading, and arithmetic were the subjects farmer kids needed to learn. There was no place for beauty in High Prairie. Cabbages were a way of life. This, then, is the story of Selina Peake who, at nineteen, came to teach in High Prairie, Illinois. She was to marry a stolid Dutch farmer, bear him a son, and find herself a widow. However, she was never to forget that beauty was important—as im- portant as the practical things of life. She became a slave to the soil, making every sacrifice that her son might have the things she had missed.
He became a great success in Chicago, but he traded integrity for power and position. It was in an underprivileged neighbour’s son that Selina saw her great dream coming true. And when it came to a choice between her own son and this boy, Selina knew where her own integrity lay. Surely no novel in recent years has probed so deeply into a mother’s heart.
When you read So Big, you will know exactly why it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
Download So Big - Edna Ferber - PDF - 12 MB