Jim and Antonia come to the Nebraska plain from different places in the social hierarchy and from different parts of the world. Orphaned at the age of ten, Jim leaves his parents' Virginia home to live with his granparents on their comfortable Nebraska farm. Arriving in America from Bohemia with her family, fourteen-year-old Antonia faces linguistic and cultural barriers as well as ethnictensions common to first-generation pioneer immigrants. Early in her friendship with Jim, Antonia highlights their differences. "Things will be easy for you," she tells Jim, "but they will be hard for us".