My Antonia

by Willa Cather Narrated by Sara Nichols

Overview

Willa Cather's third novel of the "Prairie Trilogy," "My Ántonia" is the book that cemented Cather's place as a major American literary figure of the 20th century. Soon after "My Ántonia" was published in 1918, Cather was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel "One of Ours," set in World War I.
"My Ántonia" relates the story of two young arrivals in Nebraska in the 1880's: Jim Burden and Ántonia Shimerda. Jim is an orphan, traveling to Nebraska to live with his grandparents, while Ántonia is emigrating to Nebraska with her Bohemian parents and siblings. The novel follows the pair as they become fast friends and experience life (and great challenges) on the Western prairie.
Received with rapturous reviews when it first appeared in print, "My Ántonia" has gone on to become an American classic and a beloved literary treasure. It is presented here in its original, unabridged format.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Audio

02/24/2014
This audio edition of Cather’s novel and final book in the author’s prairie trilogy is adequately narrated by Mondelli. Following the death of his parents, Jim Burden was sent to Black Hawk, Neb., to live with grandparents. It was in Black Hawk that he met the great and enduring love of his life, the bohemian Ántonia. Years later, lawyer Jim returns to Black Hawk, where he revisits the past and witnesses how both their lives have changed. Mondelli’s reading will likely fail to delight Cather fans. While his pacing, tone, and pronunciation are workmanlike, they do little to enliven the author’s text. Similarly, the voices he lends the book’s characters are distinct and sufficient, but nothing more. Overall, listeners will likely feel that the narrator could have done more to bring this classic novel to life. (Dec.)

From the Publisher

No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia. It is the finest thing of its sort ever done in America.”—H. L. Mencken 

“Can one name another American novel whose emotional quality is so true, so warm, so human as that of My Ántonia.”—Clifton Fadiman 

“To reread Cather is to rediscover an arresting chapter in the national past.”—Los Angeles Times 

“The time will come when she'll be ranked above Hemingway.”—Leon Edel

John Swift Occidental College

"This edition is distinguished by its broad editorial attention to history: to the pioneering era that Cather's novel describes and to the pre-World War I U.S. in which it was written. Most interestingly, the primary documents convincingly connect My Ántonia not only to Cather's developing aesthetic theory but also to broad American cultural concerns of immigration, conservation, and national self-definition. This edition allows readers to see the novel as a complexly articulated response to the great issues and energies of America as it entered the modern age."

Merrill Skaggs Drew University

"Cather's great novel is accompanied here by Joseph Urgo's intellectually insightful and audacious introduction and by the best available collection of historical materials relevant to the work. This splendid edition will appeal both to those who are beginning and to those who are continuing their explorations of this masterpiece."

Western American Literature

"A distilled, high-level course in Cather."—Western American Literature

Review of English Studies

"The arrival of a definitive text . . . does timely service. Handsomely printed, and replete with textual notes and James Woodress’s assiduous history of the novel’s composition and reception, it gives My Ántonia due scholarly format."—Review of English Studies

DEC 07/JAN 08 - AudioFile

There is cause for rejoicing that this beautiful, much loved novel appears in a new audio production. And for distress, since Jeff Cummings was not the right choice to do the honors. MY ANTONIA paints a deep portrait of a pioneer farm community on the Nebraska plains, and especially of its immigrant girls from Denmark, Sweden, and Bohemia, whom the narrator, Jim Burden, especially loves. Cummings lacks a talent for accents, and most of his sound like Dublin by way of the American Deep South. His acting skills fall short of the industry standard. The book itself glows, but partly with a sheen of regret for a missed opportunity. B.G. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940178268643
Publisher:	SoundCraft Audiobooks
Publication date:	12/10/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	1,057,893

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

I first heard of Ántonia on what seemed to me an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America. I was ten years old then; I had lost both my father and mother within a year, and my Virginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparents, who lived in Nebraska. I travelled in the care of a mountain boy, Jake Marpole, one of the 'hands' on my father's old farm under the Blue Ridge, who was now going West to work for my grandfather. Jake's experience of the world was not much wider than mine. He had never been in a railway train until the morning when we set out together to try our fortunes in a new world.

We went all the way in day-coaches, becoming more sticky and grimy with each stage of the journey. Jake bought everything the newsboys offered him: candy, oranges, brass collar buttons, a watch-charm, and for me a Life of Jesse James, which I remember as one of the most satisfactory books I have ever read. Beyond Chicago we were under the protection of a friendly passenger conductor, who knew all about the country to which we were going and gave us a great deal of advice in exchange for our confidence. He seemed to us an experienced and worldly man who had been almost everywhere; in his conversation he threw out lightly the names of distant states and cities. He wore the rings and pins and badges of different fraternal orders to which he belonged. Even his cuff-buttons were engraved with hieroglyphics, and he was more inscribed than an Egyptian obelisk.

Once when he sat down to chat, he told us that in the immigrant car ahead there was a family from ' across the water' whose destination was the sameas ours.

'They can't any of them speak English, except one little girl, and all she can say is "We go Black Hawk, Nebraska." She's not much older than you, twelve or thirteen, maybe, and she's as bright as a new dollar. Don't you want to go ahead and see her, Jimmy? She's got the pretty brown eyes, too!'

This last remark made me bashful, and I shook my head and settled down to 'Jesse James.' Jake nodded at me approvingly and said you were likely to get diseases from foreigners.

I do not remember crossing the Missouri River, or anything about the long day's journey through Nebraska. Probably by that time I had crossed so many rivers that I was dull to them. The only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska.

I had been sleeping, curled up in a red plush seat, for a long while when we reached Black Hawk. Jake roused me and took me by the hand. We stumbled down from the train to a wooden siding, where men were running about with lanterns. I couldn't see any town, or even distant lights; we were surrounded by utter darkness. The engine was panting heavily after its long run. In the red glow from the fire-box, a group of people stood huddled together on the platform) encumbered by bundles and boxes. I knew this must be the immigrant family the conductor had told us about. The woman wore a fringed shawl tied over her head, and she carried a little tin trunk in her arms, hugging it as if it were a baby. There was an old man, tall and stooped. Two half-grown boys and a girl stood holding oilcloth bundles, and a little girl clung to her mother's skirts. Presently a man with a lantern approached them and began to talk, shouting and exclaiming. I pricked up my ears, for it was positively the first time I had ever heard a foreign tongue.

Another lantern came along. A bantering voice called out: 'Hello, are you Mr. Burden's folks? If you are, it's me you're looking for. I'm Otto Fuchs. I'm Mr. Burden's hired man, and I'm to drive you out. Hello, Jimmy, ain'tyou scared to come so far west?'

I looked up with interest at the new face in the lantern-light. He might have stepped out of the pages of Jesse James. He wore a sombrero hat, with a wide leather band and a bright buckle, and the ends of his moustache were twisted up stiffly, like little horns. He looked lively and ferocious, I thought, and as if he had a history. A long scar ran across one cheek and drew the corner of his mouth up in a sinister curl. The top of his left ear was gone, and his skin was brown as an Indian's. Surely this was the face of a desperado. As he walked about the platform in his highheeled boots, looking for our trunks, I saw that he was a rather slight man, quick and wiry, and light on his feet. He told us we had a long night drive ahead of us, and had better be on the hike. He led us to a hitching-bar where two farm-wagons were tied, and 1 saw the foreign family crowding into one of them. The other was for us. Jake got on the front seat with Otto Fuchs, and I rode on the straw in the bottom of the wagon-box, covered up with a buffalo hide. The immigrants rumbled off into the empty darkness, and we followed them.

I tried to go to sleep, but the jolting made me bite my tongue, and I soon began to ache all over. When the straw settled down, I had a hard bed. Cautiously I slipped from under the buffalo hide, got up on my knees and peered over the side of the wagon.

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