My Antonia takes place in Blackhawk, Nebraska and its surrounding

farmland. The novel involves the main character, Jim, recalling his

childhood in this area. Willa Cather said about her own years in

Nebraska: "that country was the happiness and the curse" of her

life.[9] She wrote of both the determination and bravery of the

pioneers there, and the brutality of life on that barren land.


It opens with Jim riding on a train out west from his home on the east

coast. Although he seems unhappy with his current life and marriage,

these memories of youth seem to keep him from being completely

broken. The country that Jim first found alarming, now "seemed to

[him] the roads to freedom". [10]


Later, Jim begins to recall his first trip on the westbound train when

after the death of his parents, he was forced to move west alone to

live with his grandparents on a farm in Nebraska. Like Cather,

he was apprehensive at first about the change in landscape,

but soon the Midwest began to feel like home.