My Antonia

The Best Days Are First To Flee The stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, who lives with his grandparents and Antonia Shimerda, the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigrants. Each child travels west to partake in the pioneer life in Nebraska at the end of the 19th century. Both families labor to farm the harsh, but fertile land of the American prairie. Along with Cather’s other books O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark, My Antonia is considered part of her “Prairie Trilogy.”