'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
wine-stains...And there was so much motion in it; the
whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.' 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. ABOUT THE
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