Deprived of the opportunity for monastic obedience in a monastery, the author of these notes and their heroes learned from their own experience what the years of Khrushchev's "thaw" and the subsequent "stagnation" meant for the Orthodox Church.
A book possessing the force of documentary testimony broadens our understanding of the not-so-distant past, especially for those accustomed to thinking that the years of communist persecution of the Church were only the 1920s and 1930s.
The work of the monk Mercury is a sober warning about the difficulties and risks of spiritual labor without experienced guidance.