My alltime favorite book is My Antonia by Willa Cather...so much so that I spent a week this summer at The Clearing, a folk school in Door County, studying this novel with a group of other readers. Although I had read the novel several times, this week long course greatly added to my appreciation of the novelist and this title, in particular.
To show you what a fan I am of this novel, a couple of years ago, as my husband and I were on our way to visit my daughter in Denver, we stopped at Red Cloud, Nebraska, home of Willa Cather and took the tour. Our guide told us about the house featured at the end of the novel (where a grown, happily married Antonia lives) and indicated on a map where the real house was. My wonderful (long suffering) husband drove out there and let me go sit on the back step of the house (no one was home...I am relentless) and gaze about at the literally empty Nebraska prairie, look at the old orchard mentioned in the novel and pretend i was Antonia. What a joy!
So to begin my blog entitled Ricki's Picks I must, of course tell you about my favorite pick.
My Antonia by Willa Cather
As Jim Burden returns home to the town of Black Hawk memories surround him of his childhood, his friend, the spirited young Bohemian girl, Antonia Shimerda, and the hard times she and her family endured as new immigrants on the Great Divide of Nebraska. This twentieth century classic embodies the indomitable spirit of women pioneers, the beauty and harshness of the land, the power of family and friendship, and the story of one unforgettable young woman
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