My Ántonia (1918), the masterpiece by Willa Cather, is a tribute to the immigrant pioneers on the plains of America. We are in the late 19th century, when Europeans are migrating en masse to the USA. The orphaned ten-year-old Jim from Virginia moves in with his grandparents to Nebraska. There he forms a deep friendship with twelve-year-old Ántonia, the daughter of immigrants from Bohemia.

Now grown up, Jim, an established lawyer, decides to write the gripping story of how she managed to achieve her independence against all odds. For Jim, "this girl represented the country itself."

Willa Cather (1873-1947) received the Pulitzer Prize in 1923. She is one of the most significant American writers of the 20th century, and Ántonia is "one of the most admirable heroines in American literature. A hymn to the indomitable human spirit" (The New York Times).