The reminiscences of a New York lawyer, Jim Burden, about his boyhood in Nebraska, particularly concerning a young Bohemian girl named Ántonia Shimerda, are set against the backdrop of the American assimilation of the immigrant.

In Sixteen Brides, Civil War widows living in St. Louis are lured west by promises of prime homesteads in a booming community. When the unsuspecting women arrive at Plum Grove, Nebraska, sparks fly as they meet bachelors convinced they've come to marry them. The widows will need all the courage and faith they can muster to survive these unwanted circumstances-especially since appearances are so deceiving.

Young Elsie must find a way to adapt to her new home on the Nebraska prairie after she and her father leave their comfortable city life in Boston.

"In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett...