Olga, a young Russian wife from a privileged background, follows her husband to Siberia, in 1898. There they face physical and emotional hardships as political exiles. She soon finds herself responsible for the welfare of the whole family, which includes her two children and her aristocratic Mama, and as she finds new strengths comes to question the authority of her would-be revolutionary-hero husband and her marriage. Further losses, and unexpected entanglements, lead her to question all her values and to change profoundly. The setting is a tiny, isolated village on the edge of the steppes where Olga learns much about the peasants who are now her neighbors, their lives under serfdom and after emancipation, the Czarist prison system and the plight of exiles. The local Orthodox priest and his wife and the regonal doctor and his assistant aid in her education.