My Antonia by Willa Cather

“My Antonia” is one of Willa Cather’s best known books. She began writing in her 40’s and this book is her fourth, first published in 1918. Cather is famous for giving us full and vivid stories of characters who explored and settled America, many of whom came from other countries. “My Antonia” is set in Nebraska, where Cather’s family relocated from Virginia when she was nine years old.

The book is about Antonia Shimerda, a Bohemian immigrant girl who first comes to Nebraska from Europe when she is only 12. But Antonia does not tell the story, her neighbor Jim does. He comes to Black Hawk, Nebraska, to live with his grandparents after his parents die, the same time that Antonia and her family arrive. His family helps Antonia’s family out as they undergo hardships. Think of living in a cave, hollowed out in the sod, during your first winter before you can plant and build a house ! The Shirmedas have to do just that to get through the bitter winter, hanging on until springtime.

Having the story told from Jim’s point of view gives us a chance to know Antonia as if she was our friend and companion, too. We see her vitality and high spirits. She loves the farm and the countryside, and when she has to live in the city for an interlude, being anonymous, alone among so many, crushes her spirit. She wants to be where she knows “every stack and tree, and where all the ground is friendly.”

Their two lives inevitably grow apart, as Jim becomes educated and moves east, rising in the world of railways and big business. Antonia stays on and has her own struggles in the small town and its community. But their friendship stands fast, anchored when they were children, wandering over the prairie that is so lush in spring, and so stark in the summer heat and the winter blasts. Cather brings the land and its feelings right to you, just as she does with the people. There are echoes of Fitzgerald’s Gatsby here- how the future beckons us, yet leaves the strongest feelings in the past. Cather suggests that Antonia has taken the right road – that the land and each other, and being faithful to both, may be our best chance for contentment.

The Bright Forever / by Lee Martin

On a summer evening in a small midwestern town, nine-year-old Katie Mackey rides her bike to the library and doesn't come back. Katie being the darling daughter of town magnate Junior Mackey, everything is immediately committed to searching for the missing girl. But with few leads, fewer suspects and only marginal circumstantial evidence, the investigation soon grows cold, unable to net even the smallest details as the days go by. Yet while the authorities know very little, certain key individuals know all too much about the disappearance.

The real story is steadily revealed by a handful of loosely connected individuals, each offering their collective input, regrets, suspicions and secrets about the night in question. Gilley is Katie's sensitive older brother, so filled with remorse over his inability to keep his sister safe that he's willing to do anything (well, almost anything) to see things righted. Then there's Henry Dees. Welcomed into the Mackey home as Katie's tutor, Mister Dees may be a respected high school math teacher, but he's also a bit of a creepy loner whose voyeuristic habits haven't been so discrete as to go unnoticed. Lonely simpleton Claire Mains may not be a suspect, but her own suspicions about her n'er do-well husband Raymond R. can't be quelled, sentiments strongly echoed by more than a few others. Ultimately the fact that Raymond R. looks the part is enough to convince an indignant Junior Mackey who, ignoring all due process of law, subsequently takes justice into his own hands.

Readers will enjoy how Martin, author of River of Heaven, combines an omniscient narrative with multiple first-person perspectives, able to reveal the most intimate of intimate details about the story and surrounding context. The characters aren't so appealing though. Dees, with whom the most confidences are exchanged, is an irritatingly sensitive guy with little to do but mope about his lot as an outcast amid the splendor of the Mackeys, their charming home and vibrant children. Gilley is totally one-dimensional as the all-american older brother, never quite real enough to express anything but sentimental fondness for the world around him. And while the two villains, Raymond R and Junior Mackey, bring welcomed attitude and action, they do so in predictably flagrant fashion providing the story with little depth or substance. (FIC MARTIN)

Winesburg, Ohio / by Sherwood Anderson

Few writers have captured the conscious of small town America as uniquely as Sherwood Anderson. His 1916 novel Winesburg, Ohio was described by John Updike as “feverish, phantasmal and dreamlike . . . a veritable cross-section of Midwestern life”. Similar in scope to Thornton Wilder’s "Our Town" or even Joyce’s Dubliners, Anderson’s fictional Winesburg is a string of loosely interconnected short stories centering on several of the community’s more prominent (and not-so-prominent) figures.


“That’s how it’ll be. That’s how everything’ll turn out.”

20-year-old George Willard wants to write. Louise Drunnion wants a husband. Farmer Jesse Bentley wants his grandson to see things his way. Tom Foster wants another drink and Seth Richmond just wants to be left alone. All want something other than what their quiet Midwestern town of Winesburg, Ohio has to offer. Because in 1890’s America, Winesburg is still an agrarian society, a world of farming and dependence on the soil far removed from the progressive industry and accelerated pace of cosmopolitan metropolises. Little in the way of lifestyle has changed in the last 150 years. How each person manifests his and her own destiny is not just a personalized endeavor, but an enterprise reflecting the conscious and collective temperament of the entire town. Quiet desperation looms like a fog over everything, giving rise to indiscretions, misunderstandings and personal tragedies; unintended for the most part, but disheartening all the same.

Seamlessly does Anderson weave together his microcosm of 19th century American life and yet his world is one which could exist anywhere at anytime. Because, as Anderson demonstrates, all persons must encounter the human condition in one form or another. In Winesburg, though honorable and even noble ambitions aspire within each character, misfortune and disillusionment are realized as the common fate, an inevitable conclusion for anyone mercilessly thrown underfoot of carnal temptations and personal passions. (FIC ANDERSON)

The Center of Everything / by Laura Moriarty

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Eileen frowns, taking a drag off her cigarette. "She'll go to hell, honey, if she keeps making fun. I know it's sad, but those are the rules." (p. 8)

Evelyn Bucknow wasn't planned. Her mom Tina had her as a teenager after cutting ties with Evelyn's father. Resenting her own father's disapproval, Tina relocated to middle-of-nowhere Kerrville, Kansas where now only Eileen--Tina's mom, Evelyn's grandmother--makes visits to their ratty apartment by the highway. At 10, Evelyn's bright and observant, already percieving how her mother's immaturity preserves their near-destitute lifestyle. A disadvantaged homelife isn't easy, but peer-rejection only inflates Evelyn's animosity, inadvertently making school her refuge during the adolescent years. But even Evelyn isn't immune to hormones, revealed through an unrequited infatuation with Travis, a neighbor boy in love with her best friend.

It's not through absence of initiative that things remain more or less the same for the pair. Tina wants better for her and Evelyn but lacks the discipline to roll with the punches. A man magnet, Tina's never without 'opportunities', albeit ones with consequences like her second "accident", Samuel, whose mental handicap does little to alleviate economic burdens. Yet it's his presence which quietly sparks (or rather settles) something in Tina, a humble compassion little evidenced beforehand creating a responsible mother out of a once-haughty renegade. Between Evelyn's subdued persistence and Tina's evolving maturity, things slowly begin to perk up after so many years of dismal prospects.

No matter how redundant it sounds, it's still true: Everyone has a story to tell. A cliche perfectly describing this story. Tina and Evelyn's circumstances could--and do--exist anywhere, and yet Moriarty's touch adds so much more. It's the small things that subtly connect with the reader: smell of the laundromat, stained carpet, dirt under the apartment's staircase, etc. Apart from the physical atmosphere, it's the emotional quality of Evelyn's narrative--a somber, increasingly submissive attitude--which evokes that identifiable distinction of realism. Altogether it culminates in a vivid description of low-income America where drudgery and discontent go hand in hand.