Jim meets his kindly grandparents and by the next day he is already appreciating a whole new world of earth, sun, and unending prairie. When they reach their destination, Otto Fuchs, a cowboy, picks up Jim and Jake Marpole, a hired hand who has accompanied Jim leaving the station, Jim sees the immigrant family, looking huddled and lost. During his train trip, Jim learns of an immigrant family that is also traveling to Black Hawk.

The reader travels back in time to when Jim Burden's parents die and his Virginia relatives send the 10-year-old Jim to his grandparents, who live on a Nebraska farm.

With this introduction, Ántonia Shimerda's story begins and is marked by the changes in the seasons of both life and the prairie. Jim delivers it to her, changing the title to My Ántonia, and thus indicating that the script will be a personal story. Jim has written a memoir about her and the narrator expresses interest in reading the manuscript. Their conversation is a reminiscence about their small hometown of Black Hawk, Nebraska, and a Bohemian girl they both remember named Ántonia Shimerda. The novel begins on a train trip in which the narrator and a childhood friend, Jim Burden, share words about the past.

Book IV: The Pioneer Woman's Story: Chapters I-IV.

Book II: The Hired Girls: Chapters XI-XV.

Book II: The Hired Girls: Chapters VIII-X.

Book II: The Hired Girls: Chapters V-VII.

Book II: The Hired Girls: Chapters I-IV.

Book I: The Shimerdas: Chapters XVII-XVIII.

Book I: The Shimerdas: Chapters XIV-XVI.

Journeys in my antonia