“Leaving people with a great number of unfinished deeds, untold tales, and songs left unwritten, the war, on top of everything else, imposed an equal number of tight knots and loops in people’s very destinies,” says the famous Soviet writer Mikhail Alekseev. The novel is devoted to how these knots were tied and untied. These were severe trials in the military, political, economic, and moral sense—and Soviet people came out of them with honor. Not only were they not broken morally; they became even stronger. All of this is shown through specific human destinies, with artistic means.