Pulitzer Prize Fiction Winner
So Big
by Edna Ferber
Summary
Selina Peake DeJong, a cultured young woman left penniless by her father's death, marries a Dutch farmer outside Chicago and spends her life laboring on a market garden while raising her son Dirk. Ferber sets Selina's quiet idealism and love of beauty against the era's hunger for easy money and social climbing, drawing a sharp moral contrast between mother and son. The novel's warm, panoramic realism made Ferber one of the most widely read American storytellers of her generation.
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Historical Context & Significance
Ferber was a powerhouse of midcentury storytelling, also writing "Show Boat" and "Giant." The book reflects the get rich quick obsession of the 1920s.