“That summer Per Hansa was transported, was carried farther and ever farther away on the wings of a wonderful fairy tale--a romance in which he was both prince and king, the sole possessor of countless treasures. In this, as in all other fairy tales, the story grew ever more fascinating and dear to the heart, the farther it advanced.... Ever more beautiful grew the tale; ever more dazzlingly shone the sunlight over the fairy castle.” On one side there is the “divine restlessness,” the “enchanting joyousness” of Per Hansa, on the other, Beret’s poignant yearning for human companionship and inner spiritual peace which her dread of the stark reality cannot satisfy. “Bleak, grey, God-forsaken, the empty desolation stretched on every hand ... How could one lift up one’s voice against such silence!” As winter came on Beret saw only the snow, and for her the day “died in a pitch-black night that weighed down the heart.” Her reflections give the key to the book: “The country did not at all come up to her expectations; here, too, she saw enough of poverty and grinding toil. What did it avail, that the rich soil lay in endless stretches? More than ever did she realise that ‘man liveth not by bread alone.’... Even the bread was none too plentiful at times.... “But no sooner had they reached America than the west-fever had smitten the old settlements like a plague. Such a thing had never happened before in the history of mankind; people were intoxicated by bewildering visions; they spoke dazedly, as though under the force of a spell.... ‘Go west!... Go west, folks!... The farther west, the better the land!’ Men beheld in feverish dreams the endless plains, teeming with fruitfulness, glowing, out there where day sank into night--a Beulah Land of corn and wine!... Ever westward led the course, to where the sun glowed in matchless glory as it sank at night; people drifted about in a sort of delirium, like birds in mating time; then they flew toward the sunset, in small flocks and large--always toward Sunset Land.... Now she saw it clearly: here on the trackless plains, the thousand-year-old hunger of the poor after human happiness had been unloosed!” As she expects to die in childbirth, she pleads with Per Hansa to take the other children back to civilisation: “Human beings cannot exist here!... They grow into beasts!” And the magic of a fairy tale turns out to be simply nature red in tooth and claw. In the last section of the book, entitled “The Great Plain Drinks the Blood of Christian Men and is Satisfied,” the story is told of how Per Hansa the faithful, the hopeful, the loving husband and father, is frozen to death while going for a doctor to help a neighbour.