My Antonia' is one man's attempt to commit to paper the beautiful, wild eyed immigrant girl who has haunted him all his life. For Jim Burden, Antonia Shimerdas symbolises all the extraordinary contradicitions of the American West: Its harshness, its untamed beauty, its blazing summers and bitter winters, its endless possibilities and vast unconquerable horizons. This is his attempt to immortalise her, to posses her as he never could in life. Widely regarded as Willa Carter's finest novel, My Antonia, is a moving and powerful description of love and a timeless portrait of a land and its people.