In the spring, the Shimerdas are living in a new house their neighbors help build and Ántonia is working in the fields like a farm hand. Jim notices that she has become manly and coarse, Mrs. Shimerda remains suspicious and ungrateful, and Ambrosch is deceitful and sly. There is a rift between the two families over a horse collar but it is later healed by Grandfather.
When Jim has been with his grandparents three years, they decide to move into Black Hawk. Here Jim longs for the prairie and misses his friendship with Ántonia and the farmhands. His grandmother arranges for a neighbor, Mrs. Harling, to engage Ántonia as her hired girl. This marks the beginning of Ántonia’s experiences in town. She works well for the Harlings, but she is also drawn to a dance pavilion with a group of other hired girls. Among them are Lena Lingard, a dressmaker, and Tiny Soderball, who works at the Boys’ Home Hotel. Lena has a dubious reputation and is flirtatious and beautiful. As Jim continues to spend time with Ántonia, by summer her social life is interfering with her job and she is fired. So she goes to work for Wick Cutter, the notorious moneylender and womanizer.
By now a bored Jim is sneaking out at night to dances and seeing Lena who has let him kiss her. He begins to dream sensuous dreams of her but wishes his dream girl were Ántonia. When his grandmother discovers he is sneaking out, Jim is contrite and promises not to do it anymore. A summer picnic is an opportunity for one last idyllic day spent with Ántonia and Lena where Ántonia scolds him for flirting with Lena, telling him he has a greater future than life in Black Hawk. The day ends with a symbolic image of a plow, bold and black against the setting sun.
Meanwhile, Ántonia is suspicious of a trip planned by Wick Cutter and her misgivings prove to be correct. She convinces Jim to spend the night at the Cutters’ house and Wick returns in an attempt to seduce Ántonia. She leaves the Cutter employ and once again is engaged by the Harlings.
Jim spends the summer studying for exams to get into the state university. In the fall, he leaves for Lincoln and the university, but no matter how much he studies he finds his life on the prairie and his friendships interfering with his concentration. Lena moves to Lincoln, and she and Jim begin a social life that includes attending plays together, most notably Dumas’ Camille. This leads Jim to neglect his studies and his Latin teacher, Gaston Cleric, suggests that Jim transfer to Harvard University where Cleric is taking a position. Jim is now nineteen and his grandfather permits him to go to the East. Before he leaves, Lena tells him that Ántonia is engaged to a railroad man, Larry Donavan.
The friends go their separate ways. Jim leaves for Harvard and Ántonia goes to Denver to marry Larry Donovan. Lena opens a dressmaking shop in San Francisco and Tiny Soderball eventually ends up in Alaska where she becomes wealthy. Jim assumes that Ántonia is fine, but he later finds out Donovan deceived her, leaving her pregnant and unmarried. Ántonia returns to Black Hawk, has her baby, and works in the fields once again. On a return visit Jim spends a day with Ántonia and she shows him her baby. She seems somber but settled and Jim tells her how much she has become a part of him. He holds also the memories of her father who lives on in both their hearts. Jim believes this will be the last time they will see each other and he tries to memorize the prairie, the fields, and the tall grass, wishing he were a boy again with a laughing Ántonia running beside him.
Twenty years later, Jim Burden sees Ántonia on a trip to Black Hawk. She has married well to Anton Cuzak, a cousin of Anton Jelinek. They have many children and Jim spends an evening looking at old photographs with them and hearing the stories of the past from Ántonia’s children. Meeting her husband, Jim finds that Cuzak already seems to know him because Ántonia has described him so well to her whole family. Happy and contented, Ántonia is rooted in the prairie and the Nebraska farmland. When Jim leaves, he promises to return and take the Cuzak boys hunting the next summer.
Reflecting on the past, Jim realizes that many of his old friends have died or moved away, but he still has memories and longings for the prairie. He remembers the train trip so long ago where he first saw the frightened and small immigrant girl, Ántonia. Now she seems larger than life, like the plow against the sunset, acclimated to the prairie land. In contrast, Jim seems rootless, traveling and adrift in life. He vows to return to the prairie where he felt a peace and contentment that eludes him in the East, and where Ántonia and her family share his past.
