My Antonia

Written by Willa Cather

Narrated by Stephanie Brush

Here is a story of the prairie in the mid 1800's, when American citizens and European immigrants rushed to the Nebraska prairie to secure their free 160 acres and build their homesteads. It's a story of young people in a young country, of Jim Burden from Virginia and barefoot Antonia Shimerda from Bohemia. Neighbors on a vast sea of rolling grass, sharing the hardships of living in sod houses and farming land that had never seen a plow. The prairie was both a lonely and friendly land, lonely with its empty distances and friendly because pioneer settlers felt an instinctive bond with each other. This is their story, how and why they endured and succeeded.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books in Motion
• Release date: May 15, 2005
• ISBN: 9781614532651

Willa Cather

Willa Cather (1873-1947) was an award-winning American author. As she wrote her numerous novels, Cather worked as both an editor and a high school English teacher. She gained recognition for her novels about American frontier life, particularly her Great Plains trilogy. Most of her works, including the Great Plains Trilogy, were dedicated to her suspected lover, Isabelle McClung, who Cather herself claimed to have been the biggest advocate of her work. Cather is both a Pulitzer Prize winner and has received a gold medal from the Institute of Arts and Letters for her fiction.

Reviews for My Antonia

[joririchardson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Just a few pages in to "My Antonia," I wondered why I had let it sit unread on my shelves for so long.This book is simply gorgeous, written with evocative, honest language. I was a bit surprised when this book not only opened being narrated by a male, but by a very young boy named Jim Burden. From the title and the description on my edition's back cover, I had assumed that it would be the titular Antonia cast as the main character.I needn't have worried. No one, not even Antonia herself, could have lit up her life so poignantly. To Jim, Antonia is a girl and later a woman unparalleled, his "country girl" goddess. Even though the book follows Jim, it is Antonia's life that comes across to the reader as so very beautiful.I just loved Jim's narrative voice, especially in his childhood years. He is frank, honest, detailed, and insightful. I felt that Cather captured flawlessly the time of childhood, so vividly that I found myself transported through her writing to my own childhood - not so much actual experiences or memories, but rather the carefree, golden feeling of it. With that being said, Cather captured, well, *everything* flawlessly. "My Antonia" has to be one of the prettiest books I have ever read. I think I found something breathtaking on every page. I normally jot down a few quotes from books as I am reading them that catch my eye. Impossible to do so here - I wanted to write down passages every page or so. Had I decided to take down every beautiful passage I came across, I might as well have decided to copy out the entire novel onto my little bookmark.As I read, I would often find myself pausing to re-read sentances and paragraphs twice. Cather's writing is just so achingly beautiful, you can't help it.This, the depth of characters, and the sense of time passed makes this book seem a lot longer and bigger than it actually is. To write this review without mentioning characters would be tragic, so I will cover some of them here.Jim, our narrator, was a delightful voice, as I mentioned above. He sees so much in life, both with realism (his brutal honesty was hilarious, sometimes) and with dreamy artistry. He looks at life like a painting, and manages to coax beauty out of the most starkly ordinary settings and situations. And then of course, there is Antonia. She and her family immigrate to the American prairie from Bohemia, and while she never expresses discontent with their new life, Antonia obviously still holds her homeland dear to her heart. Antonia is elegant, passionate, and lively. She always has a life-like spark to her, even when she becomes a working girl or falls into tragedy as a young woman. Since this book has a sort of structure-less, wandering plot, it is made up of memorable stories all knit together with detailed, stunning descriptions. Some of the stories are exciting (when Jim kills a snake and earns Antonia's respect), some are humorous (when Jake must pay a fine for punching Ambrosch), some horrifying (Peter and Pavel's story of feeding a newlywed couple to hungry wolves in the snow), others heartrendingly sad (when a pregnant woman's fiancee uses up all of her money and then leaves her). In contrast to the happy, endearingly warm beginning of the book, which covers the rosy years of Jim and Antonia's childhood, the later pages are depressingly sad.Oh, the book ends happily, and Jim never stops looking for and pointing out to the reader the artful beauty of life, but you can quite sharply feel the gloom underneath. Jim says with wistful sentimentality: "...I could almost believe that a boy and girl ran along beside me, as our shadows used to do, laughing and whispering to each other in the grass."The best word for this book is "beautiful." It is work of art that spins ordinary prairie grass into gold. Highly, highly recommended.

[bookconcierge · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Date noted is when my F2F book club discussed this classic work. I had read it first back when I was in junior high. The first "adult" book I ever read.

[jessiep73 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

It was a good book, and I am glad I was finally able to read it. However, it wasn't as wonderful as I had heard it to be.

[emelymac · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An amazing and moving story!

[fasciknitting · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this book for a bookclub at work (we're creating our own "Finer Things Club", like from The Office). I was a bit apprehensive, but that was totally undeserved. This was a wonderful story about life on the Plains of Nebraska. If you loved the Little House on the Prairie series, then I think you'd love this book as well.The story is told through Jim, who befriends Antonia when they are young. The both have hard lives and take completely different paths as they grow, but that never changes the love and the admiration that they have for each other and all of their memories together. This is truly a touching, heart warming story and I would definitely recommend it.

[bookishjojo · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book. Cather conveyed beautifully the landscapes and heartaches that made up the story.

[melopher_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've fallen in love with Willa Cather's writing. I had to rush through reading My Antonia because I was on a deadline, and I wish that I hadn't. Willa Cather's books, in my experience, benefit greatly by spending a little time with them. This is the 3rd book of hers I've read (O Pioneers and Song of the Lark) and I love them all. They each have different things that make them shine. Lovely, touching, enjoyable reading.

[albinorhino_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was forced to read this book for class, and trust me "forced" is the right word. There is no way I would have read this book had I not been held responsible for knowing what it was about. The writing is inarguably beautiful at times, but there was no distinct plot, very limited characterization, and overall, I think the story could have been told in a better way. I do not have any plans to reread this anytime soon.

[jerry2book-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As a refugee from the Midwest, I think this captures the people very well. Another chronicler of the Midwest is Hamlin Garland. His Main Traveled Roads and a Son of the Middle Border also capture the people of the early Midwest.

[janepriceestrada · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What a beautiful and wonderful surprise this was. Going in, I knew that this was (1) about Nebraska, and (2) in the realm of things I usually like. I know very little about Nebraska except that there is lots of corn, and they are passionate about their college football. So, though I expected to like [My Antonia], I wasn’t sure how well I could relate to it. Well, it swept me up into a very intimate tale of Jim Burden who moves to Nebraska as a child and befriends a Bohemian family, especially their daughter Antonia. The story follows their early life on the farm, and then move to town, where Jim goes to school and Antonia works. We then follow Jim to college where he and another of the country girls develop a relationship and he learns of Antonia’s troubles. Finally, we are left with a view of Antonia, her many children, and her farm. Country girls: “…I can remember something unusual and engaging about each of them. Physically they were almost a race apart, and out-of-door work had given them a vigor which, when they got over their first shyness on coming to town, developed into a positive carriage and freedom of movement, and made them conspicuous among Black Hawk women.” Vs. Town girls: “When one danced with them, their bodies never moved inside their clothes; their muscles seemed to ask but one thing – not to be disturbed. I remember those girls merely as faces in the schoolroom, gay and rosy, or listless and dull, cut off below the shoulders, like cherubs…” This country girl appreciates those descriptions. Cather has a way of describing the landscape that makes you almost taste it. “Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons. It must have been the scarcity of detail in that tawny landscape that made detail so precious.” It has the melancholy texture of home. There are certain smells, plants, and sounds that instantly transport me to my youth. There is a feeling about the place one grows up that is hard to describe. There is a love that wells up that is not attached to an explicit memory but exists in some larger connection with a place and its people. But there is also the tension of success. There is the idea that leaving and making your way is success, while staying home is a compromise. For someone like me who never wants to live in the home of my youth again, there is also the struggle of infusing your new life with the things of your past that were special to you. There is the urge to move forward, while not forgetting. It is something I think Cather shows us through the immigrants – those who wish to assimilate completely, those who wish to maintain their old life, and those who need to find a balance between the two. For me it was extremely powerful and evoked thoughts that I had not been able to fully form before – and this is the reason I read.And finally, on Antonia: “Antonia had always been one to leave images in the mind that did not fade – that grew stronger with time. In my memory there was a succession of such pictures, fixed there like the old woodcuts of one’s first primer: Antonia kicking her bare legs against the sides of my pony when we came home in triumph with our snake; Antonia in her black shawl and fur cap, as she stood by her father’s grave in the snowstorm; Antonia coming in with her work-team along the evening sky-line. She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true. I had not been mistaken. She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one’s breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions. It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.”

[Leslie Cohen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful, sensitive storytelling. It brings to life a way of life that formed the foundation of the US.

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A delightful introduction to Cather for me.

[kslade-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good story about an immigrant young woman in the Midwest.

[chris.wolak · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love this book more with each reading. Cather's brilliance is so subtle that I often forget I'm reading a novel.

[viviennestrauss · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I can't believe that I've just now gotten around to reading this classic - however, if I had read it any earlier, I don't think that I would have appreciated as much as I do at 53.

[angelalam-300700 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of those books that haunts you forever.

I met a gentleman writer in one of my writing seminars who wrote with the same sensibility. He seemed to be the male half of Willa Cather, if such a thing is possible.

[2wondery_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I know I never read this before; but both the characters and phrasing feel so familiar. A sad, but beautiful story.

[dandelionroots · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Cather has crept onto my devour list with her stellar prose, portraits, and settings. Knowing that she beautified her friend Jim's memoir of his existence among "hired girls" on Nebraska's endless plains at the end of the 19th century gives it even more power. ---The cornfields were far apart in those times, with miles of wild grazing land between. It took a clear, meditative eye like grandfather's to foresee that they would enlarge and multiply until they would be, not the Shimerdas' cornfields, or Mr. Bushy's, but the world's cornfields; that their yield would be one of the great economic facts, like the wheat crop of Russia, which underlie all the activities of men, in peace or war.

[jreynolds1959 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Jim and Antonia are two young children that are both going to Nebraska with their families. Jim is of American descent and Antonia is of Bohemian descent. Antonia's family is destitute and lives in a sod hut, but learn to work the land. As children, they are great friends. Jim always has a real "love" for Antonia and all of her liveliness. You can tell that he has always loved her, even if he hasn't quite figured that out for himself.Life sends them in different directions, but they remain friends throughout life.The descriptive writing in this novel is wonderful. You can almost feel the wind blow, the moon rise, the sun ascend as you are reading this.

[nossanna_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Death Comes for the Archbishop is one of my all time favorite books. Sadly this book was a disappointment. Seemingly endless plodding along....

[strandbooks_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My work book club read My Antonia by Willa Cather last month. I read it 15 years ago and gave it 5 stars then. You can’t beat her depictions of life on the prairie and the mix of characters. If you grew up liking Laura Ingalls you will like this. It made me want to re-read all of Cather’s works. I remember loving Death Comes for the Archbishop when I was in high school. I’m sure it is one that will be even better now.

[dominiquemarie-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colour of winestains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running."


This book is about the pioneer experience in Nebraska, particularly that of Eastern European immigrants, and is also the coming of age story of Jim Burden (narrator), and Ántonia. While the book is told from Jim's point of view, I felt more connected to Ántonia. Jim and Ántonia are friends from the moment they meet, and as the seasons and the landscape of Nebraska prairie change, so do Jim and Ántonia. They eventually take very different paths, but their friendship remains. Jim is a romantic, and very nostalgic about the past. Ántonia is the symbol of the past for him. I was wrapped up in his feelings of nostalgia, and longing for the past. As I was reading, I felt them too. I particularly loved his descriptions of the Nebraska prairie. 


CAWPILE Rating:

C- 9

A- 10

W- 10

P- 6

I- 9

L- 10

E- 10

Avg= 9.1= ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#backtotheclassics (Classic from the Americas- includes the Caribbean)
#mmdchallenge (a book published before you were born)

[bexaplex · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I managed to get through high school without reading Willa Cather. Someone recommended My Ántonia when I was looking for undramatic material suitable for reading before bedtime, and onto the wish list it went.Undramatic is an interesting label to apply to this book, which witnesses a suicide, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, several amputations and a murder-suicide. The tone is what makes the story drowsy and golden-hued — romantic doesn't even begin to cover it. It was indeed pleasant to read before falling asleep.This novel is a good counterpoint to House of Mirth because the two novels have some shared structure — you can sense Ántonia's "downfall" approaching her as soon as she moves to town, and the narrator is occasionally exasperatingly useless (both of which remind me of House of Mirth). Cather doesn't write straight-up tragedies, however — her characters have a remarkable amount of self-determination. What could have been a fatal flaw (e.g. Lena's warmheartedness to married men) becomes a colorful personality detail. I love that the entire farming community gossips about Ole Benson following Lena around and years later Lena casually dismisses their gossip with a description of her generosity of spirit ('There was never any harm in Ole,' she said once. 'People needn't have troubled themselves. He just liked to come over and sit on the draw-side and forget about his bad luck.' [p. 226]).

[bodachliath · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It is a daunting task to find anything fresh to say about a book that is justifiably regarded as a classic, so I will keep this one fairly short. Willa Cather moved with her family from New England to rural Nebraska as a child, at a time when new farmland there was still being pioneered, so this tale of the state's development and specifically the experiences of the first generation immigrant farming families from Eastern Europe and Scandinavia that settled it, is inevitably coloured by her own experiences. She distances herself cleverly by making her narrator Jim Burden a man of her own age who for quite a large part of the book retains some distance from its heroine Ántonia, but who was also her childhood friend and neighbour.The story is beautifully paced and contains nothing superfluous. Cather's Nebraska is vividly realised and her attitudes to her characters and particularly those who fall foul of conventional moral judgments seem very modern for a book first published in 1918. For the most part she avoids sentimentality too, except perhaps a little in the final chapter, which seems forgiveable. It was also interesting to read a story that is so positive about immigration at a time when there is so much paranoia about it in popular political culture.

[asxz-2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow. My first Willa Cather and I can't believe It's taken me so long. This was astonishing. Beautifully written with every open sky and blade of wind-blown grass innocently transcribed. The story feels familiar as Jim Burden is a prototypical Nick Carraway, condemned to observe, unable to effect change. I'm not the first to make the comparison and it appears that Fitzgerald judged his own work to be an inferior homage in some ways. Antonia is a tragic heroine, overflowing with life. are we supposed to be disappointed in her lack of success relative to Lena and Tiny, or, as I did, are we supposed to feel thrilled that she is married to a man who loves her and with whom she is bringing up 10 fabulous children? It doesn't matter much, I guess, but I am as captivated by Antonia as Jim.

I look forward to reading more of Ms Cather.

[zumbanista · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My Antonia by Willa Cather was well recommended to me a number of times. The last book of Cather’s Prairie Trilogy, I read the first 2 books in order to make sense of the last. So it’s taken me a number of years to finally read this book about growing up on the farms and in a small Nebraska town during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The writing is simple and beautiful. the author’s love of the wide open spaces people by hardy Europeans shines in her every word. She has a wonderful ability to tell the stories of her characters in a comical yet compassionate way. We are in for more enjoyable adventures once Jim and his grandparents left the farm and moved to the city of Black Hawk. We quickly pass through his education and learn third hand what becomes of Antonia and others. It winds up rather quickly with a bit of sentimentality.

[yhgail · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Nostalgia. Nicely done.

[patriciau-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

(This was read as part of my 2011 reading project, 100 Years, 100 Books, which commemorated RPL's 100th anniversary.)

My friend Paula, a Nebraska native, has been after me to read this book for years and now I understand. I’d been spending nearly all of my reading time with early 20th century mysteries and, quite frankly, they’d become tedious. After forcing myself through The Red House by A.A. Milne, I really felt like I needed a change of pace. I had downloaded a whole bunch of free books to my Kindle for this reading project, and My Antonia just happened to be at the top of the list, so I casually opened it one night a week ago to see what it was all about.

I found a beautiful, heartbreaking, luminous story that captivated me from the first page. Cather tells the story of Antonia Shimerda, a headstrong, handsome Bohemian girl whose family is transplanted to Black Hawk, Nebraska in the 19th century. Antonia’s story is told through the eyes of Jim Burden, an orphan who also arrives to live with his grandparents in Black Hawk on the same train as Antonia and her family. The two become fast friends whose lives twine around each other over the course of a lifetime.

The interesting thing about this story that is so different from what I’ve been reading is that there really isn’t a storyline. This is a memoir, a re-telling of a bucolic if hard childhood on the prairie, coming of age in a small mid-western town, and adulthood not yet devoid of childhood innocence and affection between lifelong friends.

I was reminded of two stories as I read this one – Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder and the 2010 Newbery winner Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool. The sod houses of Wilder’s early books are here, as is the red prairie grass, snakes, farms, and family devotion. The similarity to Manifest, Kansas is more in the characters drawn by Cather and Vanderpool than in the story. However, all three books share the same comforting, lovely tributes to the importance of family and friends.

Cather’s characters, from Antonia and her regal but defeated father, to the foreign farm girls who go to town as “hired girls,” to Antonia’s husband and colorful tribe of children, to the narrator – Jim Burden himself – are finely drawn and developed with care and compassion. She captures the tender friendship between Antonia and Jim, which becomes the thread that twines through the entire story and ultimately makes it successful.

A beautiful book that will stay with me for a long, long time.

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a lovely story of life on the midwestern prairie in a place and time not far removed from my own family. The life was hard, but the joy of being alive and human and a part of it something bigger than oneself was pervasive, particularly as it pertained to Antonia, she of the overwhelming life force. The story was somewhat slow to start as we got to know the characters and watched them growing up, but the payoff was more than worth it, seeing Antonia and Jim both finding themselves and forging their fates.

[hardlyhardy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Published 100 years ago in 1918, Willa Cather's “My Antonia” remains a remarkable work of literature. Thomas C. Foster features it in his book “Twenty-Five Books That Shaped America,” observing "it is beautifully written and was recognized as such from the moment of its publication."Although relatively short, the novel covers a lot of territory and many years. It can be said to be about many things, among them:"Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again."1. The power of memoryTwo men who grew up together in a small Nebraska town decide to share written memories of a girl they both knew, a Bohemian immigrant named Antonia Shimerda. Jim Burden is the only one who actually does so, and this book is what he remembers.Although she is four years older than him, Jim tutors her in English. He is a brilliant boy who eventually goes to Harvard and becomes a lawyer. She becomes his playmate, a lifelong friend and, thanks to the power of memory, the love of his life."I knew where the real women were, though I was only a boy; and I would not be afraid of them, either!"2. The strength of immigrant womenAntonia's father becomes so lonely for the Old Country (the power of memory again) that he commits suicide. Later her husband similarly pines for the land he left behind, but Antonia's strength and optimism (and a house full of children) helps keep him focused on the present. Unlike in Glendon Swarthout's “The Homesman,” the female prairie pioneers are the sturdy ones, able to meet any obstacle with good cheer and a little extra effort.Of all the girls in his rural community, Jim Burden finds those immigrant girls the most appealing. "If there were no girls like them in the world, there would be no poetry," he says."Everything was as it should be: the strong smell of sunflowers and ironweed in the dew, the clear blue and gold of the sky, the evening star, the purr of the milk into the pails, the grunts and squeals of the pigs fighting over their supper."3. The lure of the prairieThe prairie was the focus of all, or at least most, of Willa Cather's books, and “My Antonia” was the third novel in her prairie trilogy, which also included “O Pioneers!” and “The Song of the Lark.” Jim Burden's education and later career takes him far from the Nebraska home where he came of age, but as the saying goes, you can't take the country out of the boy. The prairie, like Antonia herself, remains a part of him and draws him back.