An Ode to a Vanished Way of Life on the Nebraska Plains. 'I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister: anything a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me.' In Willa Cather's My Antonia, Jim Burden reflects on his childhood on the Nebraska prairie and the unforgettable girl Antonia.