My Antonia by Willa Cather: book review

My Antonia (1918, version 1980) is set in rural Nebraska, America, at the turn of the 20th century. It’s about a community of migrants – from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Norway and Denmark – living in the ‘Norwegian settlement’ and coming to terms with their new homeland.

Narrated by Jim Burden, who is now a legal advisor in New York, he recounts his childhood when he was ten years old living with his grandparents after his parents died, and meeting 14-year-old Antonio Shimerda from Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). Mr. and Mrs. Shimerda had four children – Ambrosch, Antonia, Julka, and Marek.

When Jim is 14 the Harling family move to the area – Charley, Julia, Sally, Frances, and Nina. Antonia lives with them as their cook. Lena Lingard has come to town too, to work for Mrs. Thomas, the dressmaker. Out of the three Bohemian Marys, the Norwegian Anna, the very pretty Lena, and the Danish laundry girls, Jim thought Antonia was ‘the fairest of them all.’

When Jim goes to Lincoln, Nebraska, to study, he loses contact with Antonia. At 21 he enters Harvard Law School – and reconnects with Lena Lingard. Antonia is now a single mother because Larry Donovan didn’t marry her – she is disgraced. Jim returns to the community to find Antonia.

This is the story of the loves and losses within the migrant community – and who goes on to become successful professionals and business owners and who does not. Set in the wheat plains, the rugged land shapes the lives of teenagers as they become adults – shaped also by their families, where traditions and restrictions either bind people together or sets them free.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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