My Ántonia is a novel told through the memories of Jim Burden, who as a boy moves to a Nebraska farm and meets Ántonia, the daughter of a Bohemian immigrant family. Over the following years the two grow up on the prairie and in the nearby town, in a world of hard work, hardship and small joys. Ántonia's strength and warmth become the heart of the book. It is a gentle, finely observed portrait of immigrant life, childhood and memory, and it is often counted among the finest American novels.
Quotes
I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more.
The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don’t realize it.
Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen.
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.