Through Jim Burden's endearing smitten voice we revisit the remarkable vicissitudes of immigrant life in the Nebraska heartland with all its insistent bonds. Guiding the way are some of literature's most beguiling characters: the Russian brothers plagued by memories of a fateful sleigh ride Ántonia's desperately homesick father and self-indulgent mother and the coy Lena Lingard. Holding the pastoral society's heart of course is the bewitching free-spirited Ántonia.