Antonia Shimerda, with her Bohemian parents, and Jim Burden, a 10-year-old orphan, arrive in Blawk Hawk, Nebraska, at the same time. Jim has come to live with his grandparents on a farm which neighbors the Shimerda's. Jim and Antonia become friends while sharing the adventures and hardships of childhood. During these years Antonia's sensitive father loses his hope of making good in a foreign country and commits suicide. His daughter must fill his responsibilities and do a "man's work"--ploughing the fields, planting seed, feeding the livestock, and harvesting the crop--which requires that she quit school. Jim has gone east to attend Harvard, and his grandmother gets Antonia a place to work as a town hired girl. Here she is deceived, deserted, and left pregnant, but she struggles through the uncertainty of immigrant life. She rebuilds her family by marrying a good man, having many children, and securing an acreage to establish her own territory where she overcomes the constraints that were obstacles and now provide a true communal environment. Jim returns to his grandparent's home to find Antonia nourished by her victory over adversity and discovers that she "has not lost the fire of life." Cather's impassioned portrayal of the frontier sets the stage to witness the immigrants' capacity for endurance. Please Note: This book has been reformatted to be easy to read in true text, not scanned images that can sometimes be difficult to decipher. The Microsoft eBook has a contents page linked to the chapter headings for easy navigation. The Adobe eBook has bookmarks at chapter headings and is printable up to two full copies per year. Both versions are text searchable.