My Antonia is an exceptional novel, about much more than pioneers, prairies, and immigrants. It's about heart, strength and soul, embodied in the role of a Bohemian immigrant on the Nebraska prairies, Ántonia Shimerda. Told through the eyes of her great childhood friend Jim Burden, who was brought to the prairies to reside with his grandparents after the death of his parents, Ántonia's life is laid bare for the reader. Its spirit, its beauty, its rarity, all radiates from Jim's words. Despite difficulties, losses, struggles and terrible mistakes, Ántonia's heart, her joy of living, her purity, her precious ability to discover value and meaning in what others would consider useless, never diminishes. Her optimism, determination, strength and independence of character make her a creature isolated from the rest of her generation. Even dressed in rags and plowing the fields, there is a depth, a grace, an elegance about her. It is a force of nature, the spirit of America; it is at the same time simple and at the same time incomprehensibly complex. Jim loves Ántonia as much as he loves the prairies...