My Ántonia

Willa Cather

Jan 1994 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

In this symphonically powerful novel, Willa Cather created one of the most winning heroines in American fiction, a woman whose robust high spirits and calm, undemonstrative strength are emblematic of the virtues Cather most admired in her country.

Antonia Shimerda is the daughter of Bohemian immigrants struggling with the oceanic loneliness of life on the Nebraska prairie. Through the eyes of Jim Burden, her tutor and disappointed admirer, we follow Antonia from farm to town and through hardships both natural and human, surviving everything from poverty to a failed romance--and not only surviving, but triumphing. In the end, Antonia is exactly what Burden says she is: a woman who "had that something which fires the imagination, [a woman who] could stop . . . one's breath for a moment by a look or a gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things."

Ratings and reviews

Not the easiest read ever, but a great portrait of the United States between the Civil War and World War I, written by a woman who has a gift for putting the reader in the setting. It's easy to see why Willa Cather was overlooked early in her career and appreciated more towards the end and after her passing. The portraits she paints with her words were likely so real to her contemporaries they may have felt the descriptions boring, but we with the benefit of hindsight are grateful for her work.

About the author

Willa Cather (1873–1947) was raised on a Nebraska ranch and became the managing editor for McClure’s Magazine. In 1922 she won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel One of Ours.

Jessica Hische is a letterer, an illustrator, a typographer, and a web designer. She currently serves on the Type Directors Club board of directors, has been named a Forbes magazine “30 under 30” in art and design. She lives in San Francisco, California, and Brooklyn, New York.