The narrator reflects with wistful, unjudgmental melancholy on his family, the experience of growing up in the midst of only partial tamed vastness, the humanity and folly of those around him and above on on the captivating immigrant girl Antonia, whom he must always love from afar. My Antonia is full of the quiet losses of a life full of difficult decisions, but also the quiet satisfactions of goodness cherished despite all hardship.