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In heart-wrenching prose, the book tells the tale of Yule, a man damaged by a nearly devastating accident that unlocks his memories of life and survival in the former Soviet Union. Through Yule's remembrances, life in the Soviet Union's harsh gulags becomes real for readers as in their minds they trek past armed guards, adapt to extreme living conditions that sap ten years from one's lifespan, and struggle to survive not only physically but intellectually in a political system built on fear, control, and conformity. Seemingly haunted by his childhood experiences in the gulag, Yule possesses a maturity, wisdom, and carefulness that makes him an outsider no matter where he travels. As Yule grows more observant regarding the injustices bestowed upon the Soviet Union's citizens by megalomaniac dictators, his own chances of survival within the system wax and wane until, eventually, he finds himself leaving the USSR in the eventful year of 1979.
This book is more than just another story in the vein of Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago. It is a book that engages the reader with its historical and societal commentary. With its disclosures about gulag life and the internal workings of the Soviet system, this book will entice readers of historical fiction and nonfiction, and specifically those readers interested in Soviet history. However, with its focus on the nation's various geographies, the book also examines the plethora of cultures, languages, and customs that existed within the former Soviet Union, despite the Soviet government's attempts to squelch them through drastic measures. Most of all, this book testifies to people's resilience—their power, their strength, and their ability to conquer even the most tyrannical of foes and ideologies.