Ántonia elopes with a shiftless railway conductor, comes home disgraced, and finds happiness with Anton Cuzak, a gentle farmer. The novel traces the parallel lives of Jim and Ántonia - Jim (said to be modeled on Cather herself) goes to Harvard, becomes a traveling businessman, and returns to Nebraska infrequently. Her fourth novel, My Ántonia, which she thought ‘the best thing I’ve ever done,’ is set in pioneer-era Nebraska and is a story of contrasts - most noticeably the contrast between Ántonia Shimerda, the destitute child of Bohemian immigrants, and Jim Burden, a native Virginian who, after being orphaned at the age of ten, is sent to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. The author of 12 novels and nearly 60 short stories Cather won a Pulitzer Prize in 1922. One of the most important writers of the twentieth century, Willa Cather mined her childhood experiences on the Nebraska plains and later her love for the Southwest to create timeless tales of romance, tragedy, and spiritual seeking. A brief synopsis of My Ántonia by Willa Catherįrom the Book of the Month Club edition of My Ántonia: Cather created a book of singular beauty and simplicity, in which the theme of community is united with her talent for creating character development. The first year in the prairie leaves a potent impression on Ántonia and Jim, a theme that’s developed through the narrative. Set in 19th-century Nebraska, the novel follows the life of Jim Burden, an orphan boy from Virginia, and Ántonia Shimerda, the eldest daughter in an immigrant family from Bohemia (once part of Czechoslovakia). Published in 1918, it’s the last of her “prairie trilogy” of novels, preceded by O Pioneers!and The Song of the Lark. My Ántonia is considered one of the masterpieces of fiction by Willa Cather (1873 –1947).
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