bout The Author American author Willa Cather (1873 - 1947) was raised in Virginia and Nebraska and wrote eloquently about life on the Great Plains, including My �ntonia (1918), considered her masterpiece. In 1923 she won the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, set during WWI. My �ntonia tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, and the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigrants, �ntonia Shimerda, who are each brought as children to be pioneers in Nebraska towards the end of the 19th century.