The Captain's Daughter

By his father’s will, sixteen-year-old Pyotr Grinyov is sent to serve his homeland. And not the way almost any nobleman of the 18th century dreamed of— in St. Petersburg, at court, among secular nobility, in the splendor of balls and parades—but for real—in a garrison of a small fortress on the border of the Kyrgyz steppe.

Love and loyalty, hatred and betrayal, insults and a bloody duel—everything awaits the young Grinyov. And soon his fate will whirl into the devastating whirlwind of the Russian revolt—“senseless and merciless.”

“‘Which commandant?’—asked the impostor. Our cornet stepped out of the crowd and pointed at Ivan Kuzmich. Pugachev glared sternly at the old man and said: ‘How dare you resist me, your sovereign?’ The commandant, exhausted by his wound, gathered his last strength and replied in a firm voice: ‘You are not my sovereign—you’re a thief and a self-proclaimed impostor, do you hear me?’ Pugachev darkly frowned and waved a white handkerchief. Several Cossacks grabbed the old captain and dragged him to the gallows. On the crossbeam, the mutilated Bashkir he had been interrogated by the day before was found seated. He held a rope in his hand—and in a minute I saw the poor Ivan Kuzmich hanged in the air.”