The pain inflicted by the gulags has cast a long and dark shadow over Soviet-era history. Zgustova's collection of interviews with former female prisoners not only chronicles the hardships of the camps, but also serves as testament to the power of beauty in the face of adversity. These stories, collected in the vein of Svetlana Alexievich's Nobel Prize-winning oral histories, turn one of the darkest periods of the Soviet era into a song of human perseverance in a way that reads as an intimate family history.