"Giant" is the story of Bick Benedict, one of the fabulous Texans, and of Leslie Lynnton, the charming and cultured Virginian girl whom he courted, married and took to live with him in Texas. In relating the stormy course of their marriage - which in reality is the marriage of two civilizations - author Edna Ferber unrolls the whole vast panorama of the Lone Star State.
The pioneer days are over and everything in Texas is new! Big! At first Leslie is stunned by the hugeness of all she sees; the fifty-room house, Reata Ranch's two and a half million acres, sky-scrapers rising from arid plains, the endless herds of cattle, the droves of Mexican serfs - and a master race of enormous men. Slowly she realizes that she has married not only a man but a mania - the mania for bigness some Texans confuse with greatness.
Against this harsh background, so brilliantly painted that you can feel the heat of the sun shimmering across the vast plains, is the moving story of a gentle girl adapting herself to strange conditions. We live and sympathize with her throughout. The drawing of the various characters is now beautifully delicate, now savage in force. Above all, the book breathes a passionate indignation at oppression and injustice of every kind.