Nina Pavlova’s book is devoted to a terrifying and joyful event—the martyrdom of three monks at the hands of a half-mad satanist in Optina Pustyn on Easter 1993: Ferapont, Trofim, and Hieromonk Vasily. The book uses excerpts from the wonderful diary of Father Vasily, the memoirs of friends and brethren for Christ who suffered. “Great and incomparably-beautiful is the river of God—holy Optina! This river flows from the sources of temporary life into the sea of ever-joyful existence in the Kingdom of the Light that never enters. And it bears on it barges and its desert dwellers, and many other sorrowful ones.” Nina Pavlova is a pilgrim of Optina Pustyn, where she came in 1988, and since then has lived here, being an eyewitness to the restoration of the monastery and many other events. This book is a chronicle—an account of the life and deed of the three Optina new martyrs—written on the basis of the author’s diaries. A similar Optina chronicle was kept a hundred years ago by the Orthodox writer Sergey Nilus. And now, one hundred years later, the story of Optina Pustyn continues.