Zinaida Adamovich

Russian provincial town in the middle of the 1930s Stalin's Great Purge. Ivan Lapshin, the head of the local police, does what he has to do. And he does it well.

A poetic story about the first love of the village girl Natasha, loyal to the memory of the deceased fiancé. In peacetime, the heroine's fiancé blew up on a land mine that remained on the collective farm field since the war, and her life turned into a nightmare. But sooner or later, dreams end and the world opens again. Pregnant Natasha goes to the institutions, seeking to be signed with the father of the unborn child who died tragically. At the end, after long ordeals, she comes to the conclusion that writing in the marriage book will not change anything in her life.

Nikolai Burlakov was raised by his grandmother in the village. His mother always promised to take him with her, but she always broke her promise. His first love, Masha, didn't even promise to wait for him to return from the army and left with her best friend for the North. After completing his military service, Nikolai also left for the North and began working on an oil rig. Upon learning that his mother had given her daughter to an orphanage, Nikolai took his little sister and returned with her to the village. After the tragic death of her husband, Masha also returned to the village with her son...