"Noin suuri : Romaani" by Edna Ferber is a novel written in the early 20th century. Set in and around Chicago’s Dutch truck-farming community, it centers on Selina Peake DeJong, a spirited young woman who becomes a rural schoolteacher and raises her son, Dirk (“Noin Suuri”). The story probes the tension between beauty and utility, and between humane values and material success, against a backdrop of immigrant farm life and urban ambition.
The opening of the novel follows Selina’s son’s teasing nickname, “Noin suuri,” then pivots to Selina’s past: her itinerant childhood with a charming gambler father, her bookish imagination, and her happy school years in Chicago. When her father is killed in a gambling hall, she is left with two diamonds and a small sum, chooses independence over returning to austere relatives, and secures a teaching post in High Prairie through family friends. She sells one diamond, outfits herself sensibly, and rides out with Klaas Pool to the Dutch farming settlement, marveling at the cabbages and fields as if they were jewels and tapestries. At the Pool farm she meets the hard-working Maartje and daughters Geertje and Jozina, learns that twelve-year-old Roelf labors instead of schooling, and encounters the chilly, spotless household with its Dutch heirlooms and strict routines. The tone mixes Selina’s romantic eye for beauty with the plain, practical world she is entering, setting up her resilience and curiosity as she begins her new life. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
