So Big was Edna Ferber’s 1925 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
Published in 1924, the novel centers on Selina Peake DeJong, a schoolteacher who becomes a farmer and raises her son Dirk in Illinois. Its title comes from a phrase used by Selina when describing the size of things to a child.
Ferber’s fiction frequently explored ambition, work, gender expectations, and changing American communities. So Big contrasts artistic aspiration with material success, particularly through the different paths taken by Selina and Dirk.
Readers sometimes associate Ferber more immediately with Show Boat, her 1926 novel later adapted into famous musicals and films. Show Boat was not the Pulitzer-winning book. Ferber also won the Pulitzer for Fiction for So Big several decades before her later novel Giant became widely known through its 1956 film adaptation.