High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Pit: A Story of Chicago is a 1903 novel by Frank Norris. A story of wheat speculation and the trading pits at the Chicago Board of Trade Building, it was the second book in what was to be the trilogy The Epic of the Wheat. The first book, The Octopus, was published in 1901. Norris died unexpectedly in October 1902 from appendicitis leaving the third book, The Wolf: A Story of Empire, uncompleted. Together the three novels were to follow the journey of a crop of wheat from its planting in California to its ultimate consumption as bread in Western Europe.