What I Liked
Willa Cather is a beautiful writer. She paints the American countryside with so much powerful imagery and nostalgia that I cannot help but feel like I miss the farmlands in Nebraska, even though I've never been there. Her characters are rich and deep. Cather does an excellent job of exposing the difficult lives of immigrants during this time period. Impoverished, homesick, unable to speak the language of the country around you, and considered a "non-white" outcast from much of society.

Spoiler

Mr. Shimerda's suicide was one of the most tragic moments of the entire novel.

The hired girls face so much stigma and even sexual assaults in order to provide for their struggling families.

What I Didn't Like
There wasn't much of a plot to this novel. It's a story within a story; in the introduction, Jim gives his writings about Antonia to a friend. This creates a novel that is a fairly nonlinear collection of Jim's life and encounters with Antonia.