My Antonia (1918) depicts the pioneering period of European settlement on the tall-grass
prairie of the American midwest with its beautiful yet terrifying landscape rich ethnic mix
of immigrants and native-born Americans and communities who share life's joys and sorrows. Jim
Burden recounts his memories of Antonia Shimerda whose family settle in Nebraska from Bohemia.
Together they share childhoods spent in a new world. Jim leaves the prairie for college and a
career in the east while Antonia devotes herself to her large family and productive farm. Her
story is that of the land itself a moving portrait of endurance and strength. Described on
publication as 'one of the best (novels) that any American has ever done' My Antonia
paradoxically took Cather out of the rank of provincial novelists as the same time that it
celebrated the provinces and mythologized a period of American history that had to be lost
before its value could be understood.
