Old Order Mennonite Memoirs

The book I’m reading these days used to be on my mother’s book shelf and was written by Willa Cather in 1918. “My Antonia” is the story of an immigrant farm girl triumphing over hardship in pioneer Nebraska. Willa’s vivid descriptions help me envision the state with the most farms, in a time before my own. Here is the beginning of Chapter VI.

“Winter comes down savagely over a little town on the prairie. The wind that sweeps in from the open country strips away all the leafy screen that hide one yard from another in summer and the houses seem to draw closer together. The roofs,...