Jim Burden moves to Black Hawk, NE to live with his grandparents after the deaths of his parents. It is there that he met the love of his life Antonia. Jim tells of his interactions with the local children, including Antonia, his work life, & life in general in the harsh conditions of the undeveloped land of the Nebraska prairie. But as it does with many of us, life pulled both Jim & Antonia is different directions. Jim, still unmarried, goes on to become a lawyer & decides to go back to Black Hawk to pay his past a visit. He reconnects with Antonia who is now married with children. She tells Jim of her life after they parted ways, the hard work she puts in each day to make a good life & a good farm for her family. Her husband is a city boy that has landed in the prairie lands of Nebraska, & this is part of the cause for Antonia's difficult work since she is the only one that is accustomed to hard work. Jim returns to his home & his work still pining over his beloved Antonia.

There wasn't any real climax to the story. It was a fairly boring account of a young boy's life in a small town in Nebraska....a bit too close to my own story as a girl that grew up in a very small town in rural south-east Kansas. This story confirmed (as if I needed confirmation) that I should not write a book about my life; it would be boring. Then to top it off, the story ends just after Jim visited Antonia, leading the reader to believe that Jim never marries because he cannot have is only love, Antonia. So depressing.

Age recommendation: 12 & up (it is entirely clean; it's just that I don't think younger readers would find it interesting at all)

On a scale of 1-10 stars, I give it 5.