South Dakota Culture - Literature

Literature

Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose semi-autobiographical books center around her experiences as a child and young adult on the frontier, is one of South Dakota's best-known writers. She used her experiences growing up on a homestead near De Smet as the basis for four of her novels: By the Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie, and The First Four Years. Wilder's childhood home, built by her father, has been preserved and is open to the public in De Smet.

Another author from the state who wrote about the area's early period of settlement was Ole Edvart Rølvaag. Rølvaag was a Norwegian immigrant who came to Elk Point to work as a farm hand in 1896, later studying English at Augustana College (at the time located in Canton). Rølvaag later wrote a number of novels, many of which centered on the struggles of immigrants in Dakota to simultaneously make a living and preserve their heritage in a foreign country. Rølvaag's novels include Giants of the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie, Peder Victorious, and Their Fathers' God.

Novelist Frederick Manfred, who identified as "Siouxland" a region encompassing western Iowa, southern Minnesota, and eastern South Dakota, set a number of his novels in South Dakota, including The Golden Bowl (Manfred) (during the Dust Bowl) and King of Spades (during the Black Hills Gold Rush).

Black Elk, whose narration of the Indian Wars and Ghost Dance movement and thoughts on Native American religion forms the basis of the book Black Elk Speaks.

Paul Goble, a native of England who has lived in Rapid City since 1977, is an author and illustrator of children's books, most of which involve American Indian topics. He has published 29 books, and was awarded the Caldecott Medal for The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses and a Regina Medal for his body of work.