We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read the opening to Willa Cather’s 1918 novel My Ántonia. It is the final book of her "prairie trilogy" of novels, preceded by O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

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. 

This novel is considered Cather's first masterpiece. Cather was praised for bringing the American West to life and making it personally interesting. 

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