My Ántonia is a story about life on the prairie in the late 1800s. It is told from the perspective of a young boy from Virginia who has moved to Nebraska to live with his grandparents on the family farm. He arrives on the same train as Ántonia Shimerda and her family; recent immigrants from Bohemia. The story spans their friendship from childhood to later adulthood. Nearly every incident in the novel is based on the author’s own experience growing up in Nebraska. Her text serves as a window to this time and place: the hardships experienced by immigrant people, small town life and the beauty of the land before the roads went in.