![]() ![]() ![]() She endures many hardships but survives her youth and grows into adulthood.Įventually Jim’s grandparents give up farming and move into the Nebraska town of Black Hawk. Antonia has no other choice but to do the work of a man to keep her family going. Antonia’s father, seeing he has made a mistake to bring his family to such a hard life, commits suicide, leaving Antonia, her mother, sister and two brothers to manage on their own. They live in a mud hut in the side of a hill and don’t seem to be able to adapt to farming life on the prairie. Jim Burden befriends a girl a few years older than he is named Antonia Shimerda, whose family has emigrated from Bohemia. His grandparents have been farming for a long time and are fairly prosperous and comfortable for the time and place. The story is told in the voice of Jim Burden, a young boy from Virginia who goes to live with his grandparents in Nebraska after his parents die. It is set in the late 1800s, when all the farm work had to be done by hand, there was no electricity yet to speak of, and cars were still mostly only a figment of the imagination. It is the venerable American classic novel by Willa Cather, first published in 1918, about life on the prairie in Nebraska in rough pioneering days. I first read My Antonia (pronounced An-to-NEE-ah) in my youth and recently read it again. My Antonia ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp ![]()
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