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Introduction | Book 1: Chapter 1

• An unknown narrator introduces the reader to Jim Burden. Both Jim Burden and the narrator grew up in the same Nebraska town, and they have met on a train crossing Iowa.

• Months after this meeting on the train, Jim Burden delivers a manuscript to the narrator at his apartment asking if the narrator would still like to read it. Jim titles his manuscript "My Antonia" on the spot.

• The novel flashes back to Jim's youth.Jim Burden is now a ten-year-old boy riding on a train from Virginia to Nebraska. Jim has lost both his mother and father in the last year, and he is being sent to live with his grandparents.

• A conductor tells Jim and Jake about a Bohemian family on board the train, the Shimerdas.

• Jim describes the area as being nothing but land, and this impression comes from what he can...

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