April 23

My Antonia

By Willa Cather

This is a precious story, written a century ago, about rural immigrant families in Nebraska - told by one who knows the harsh reality of winter on the prairie and the challenges faced by newcomers.  After the death of his parents, young Jim has been sent to live with his grandparents in Nebraska.  Traveling there by train, he meets Antonia, whose family has come from Bohemia (Czechoslavakia) to start a new life.  They have rented a home, sight unseen, from a fellow Czech, and find it more like a cave than the kind of house they knew in the old country.  Jim's grandparents try to help with food and encouragement, and Jim and Antonia become close friends, but Antonia's father, a cultured man who plays the violin, especially suffers, and eventually takes his own life.  

Antonia eventually gets a chance to work as a cook for a family in the city, and several of her and Jim's friends move west and find success and wealth.  (These stories are almost written as tangential accounts, rather than continuing Antonia's story line.)  Jim heads east for college, marries a woman he meets there, and only years later returns to Nebraska.  He has a chance to visit his beloved Antonia - the woman with whom he probably would have found happiness - and discovers her married to a fellow Czech and the mother of 10 children.  He is delighted to meet her children and see that, while poor by his standards, they seem content.