My Ántonia

Willa Cather

Mar 2008 · Prairie Book 3 · Recorded Books · Narrated by George Guidall

Audiobook

8 hr 36 min

Unabridged

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About this audiobook

Antonia Shimerdas moves to the harsh Nebraska heartland with her impoverished Bohemian family when she is still a girl. For young Jim Burden, who lives with his grandparents on a homestead nearby, Antonia is an embodiment of the female pioneer-self-sufficient, vigorous, and determined to withstand the daily challenges of maintaining home and family in a primitive countryside. When Jim grows up, his memories return to Antonia. In his effort to understand what she meant to him, he creates an enduring picture of the American frontier and of a woman of unusual spirit.

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About the author

Willa Siebert Cather was born in 1873 in the home of her maternal grandmother in western Virginia. Although she had been named Willela, her family always called her "Willa." Upon graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1895, Cather moved to Pittsburgh where she worked as a journalist and teacher while beginning her writing career. In 1906, Cather moved to New York to become a leading magazine editor at McClure's Magazine before turning to writing full-time. She continued her education, receiving her doctorate of letters from the University of Nebraska in 1917, and honorary degrees from the University of Michigan, the University of California, Columbia, Yale, and Princeton. Cather wrote poetry, short stories, essays, and novels, winning awards including the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, One of Ours, about a Nebraska farm boy during World War I. She also wrote The Professor's House, My Antonia, Death Comes for the Archbishop, and Lucy Gayheart. Some of Cather's novels were made into movies, the most well-known being A Lost Lady, starring Barbara Stanwyck. In 1961, Willa Cather was the first woman ever voted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame. She was also inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners in Oklahoma in 1974, and the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca, New York in 1988. Cather died on April 24, 1947, of a cerebral hemorrhage, in her Madison Avenue, New York home, where she had lived for many years. George Guidall is one of the most prolific narrators of audiobooks in the world. He has recorded nearly 650 unabridged novels, everything from "Crime and Punishment" and "The Iliad" to "Snow Falling on Cedars." He began his career as an actor, appearing on Broadway and touring Europe with Helen Hayes in the "Glass Menagerie," " Miracle Worker" and "The Skin of Our Teeth." He received an Obie Award for Best Performance Off-Broadway, and has continued his performances in theater for over 40 years. Guidall has also appeared on television, with roles on the soap "One Life to Live" and "Law and Order," and in movies such as "Malcolm X" and "Tales from the Darkside." His first job reading audiobooks was for the Library of Congress' American Foundation for the Blinds' Talking Books. Since then he has won the most prestigious Audiobook Award, the Audie Award, for Best Unabridged Narration of a novel for his recording of John Irving's "A Widow for One Year." He won the Audie again in 2000 for Wally Lamb's "I Know This Much is True."

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