Setting

Giants in the Earth is set in the so-called east-river region of what is now South Dakota, that is, along the Big Sioux River at the Iowa border, southeast of SIOUX Falls. It is a place of both astounding beauty and stark wilderness. The area is subject to extremes of weather, and these extremes have a profound effect on the characters in the novel. Winters are so cold and the snow so deep that the settlers can safely store the dead in snow banks for burial in the spring. In the summer, storms blow up with "appalling violence." The risks of living on the prairie are many: madness, pestilence, storms, and prairie fire. After weeks and months of winter, "the courage of the men was slowly ebbing away." Their relief at the passing of winter is short-lived; no sooner is the wheat up than a plague of locusts...