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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