The novel tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, and the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigrants, Ántonia Shimerda, who are each brought as children to be pioneers in Nebraska towards the end of the 19th century.

[3] The novel is divided into sections called "Books": I: The Shimerdas; II: The Hired Girls; III: Lena Lingard; IV: The Pioneer Woman's Story; V: Cuzak's Boys.

Orphaned Jim Burden rides the trains from Virginia to the fictional settlement of Black Hawk, Nebraska, where he will live with his paternal grandparents.

Mr. Shimerda comes to thank the Burdens for the Christmas gifts given to them, and has a peaceful day with them, sharing a meal and the parts of a Christian tradition that Protestant Mr.

He is buried without formal rites at the corner marker of their homestead, a place that is left alone when the territory is later marked out with section lines and roads.

Deep memories are set in both of them from the adventures they share, including the time Jim killed a long rattlesnake with a shovel they were fetching for Ambrosch, her older brother.

Becoming a town girl is a success, as Ántonia is popular with the children, and learns more about running a household, letting her brother handle the heavy farm chores.

He keeps in touch with Ántonia, whose life takes a hard turn when the man she loves proposes marriage, but deceives her and leaves her with child.

Years later, Jim visits Ántonia, meeting Anton Cuzak, her husband and father of ten more children, on their farm in Nebraska.

"[7] The novel was a departure from the focus on wealthy families in American literature; "it was a radical aesthetic move for Cather to feature lower-class, immigrant 'hired girls.

[9] Writing in February 2020, critic and essayist Robert Christgau called My Ántonia a "magnificent, still too obscure novel" and said it "scrupulously documents the facts and foibles of farming as way of life and means of production, although not in the detail of O Pioneers!

[12] The 1918 version of My Antonia begins with an Introduction in which an author-narrator, supposed to be Cather herself, converses with her adult friend, Jim Burden, during a train journey.

[13]: 14  A brief introduction with Jim taking that train ride, speaking with an unnamed woman who also knew Ántonia about writing about her, is included in the version at Project Gutenberg.

[14] Douglas Sirk's film The Tarnished Angels makes reference to My Ántonia as the last book read 12 years earlier by heroine LaVerne, played by Dorothy Malone.

Emmylou Harris' 2000 album Red Dirt Girl features the wistful song "My Ántonia", as a duet with Dave Matthews.

The French songwriter and singer Dominique A wrote a song inspired by the novel, called "Antonia" (from the LP Auguri, 2001).

In Richard Powers' 2006 novel The Echo Maker, the character Mark Schluter reads My Ántonia on the recommendation of his nurse, who notes that it is "[A] very sexy story.

[17][19]: 55–6  He foresees the upcoming year as one "where good people lay low and where wolves are left free to prey on the weak".

A paragraph of My Ántonia is quoted in Kingsolver's novel in the context of a dead woman wanting it read at her funeral.

[20] In Bret Stephens' opinion piece in The New York Times, July 19, 2019, titled ”The Perfect Antidote to Trump – Willa Cather knew what made America great”[21] Stephens wrote that Willa Cather's My Ántonia is “a book for our times—and the perfect antidote to our President.” “My Ántonia becomes an education in what it means to be American.” We need to recall “what we’re really about, starting by rereading My Ántonia.” My Antonia, a 1995 made-for-television movie, was adapted from the novel.

The Illusion Theater in Minneapolis, MN, staged an adaptation of My Ántonia by playwright Allison Moore and original music by Roberta Carlson in 2010.

[24] Seattle Weekly praised the production, saying, "...with the current administration’s racial fearmongering as a goad, Book-It’s exploring yet another aspect of Cather’s 1915 novel My Ántonia, as adapted and directed by Annie Lareau, mixing racially traditional and nontraditional casting in ways that encourage the audience to view its tale of the immigrant experience in broader terms.