Book For The Week - 12/26/11

My Antonia

by

Willa Cather

Set in the late 1880s, a young man is orphaned and sent from Virginia to live with his grandparents on a farm in Nebraska.   This book is about the people he meets on the Nebraska plains who are immigrant farmers trying to make their way in the new world.  A classic book written in 1918 My Antonia by Willa Cather was a book title brought up by my library reading group as a possibility to read and discuss in 2012 but it was not selected.  It sounded like it would be good to me so I picked it up on sale from audible and listened to it during my commute.   To make a bit of a confession,  I have been MIA from social media the last month or six weeks except for occasionally peaking in quickly,  because I have been very busy with my family tree.  I have found a friend to research with and that makes it so much more fun.   Much of my computer time is spent in data entry or searching for information online.   Since there are a couple of Eastern European lines in both my kid's dad's side of the tree and on my side of the tree,  I found My Antonia   really brought those lines to life.   Even though my ancestors were in the mid west and not Nebraska,  I am sure they struggled to survive.  The book makes real the way that immigrants worked so hard in order that their children could have  a better life than they had.   It shows not only the hardships that were endured but the social outcasts that the people who had been here longer made out of the more recent immigrants.  The young Bohemian, Swedish and Norwegian women were not quite good enough dating material for the towns boys.  This book is a delightful tale of the building of the USA and does a good job of bringing the late 1800s to life.   It is available to read for free on Gutenburg.com so therefore can be downloaded to a kindle at no charge.  Be sure and click on the title and the author's name to follow the link and learn more.