Yurii Mykolaichuk

The German-Soviet war. A group of scouts discovers a four-year-old girl at a bombed-out railway station who hid during the bombing and fell behind the echelon of evacuated orphanage children, and takes her with them. Soon the scouts are ambushed by the Germans in the forest.

A family struggles to survive in an area that was claimed as part of Rumania, Poland and Ukraine, all within a short span of time. When World War II comes, various family members choose different masters; some even choose to work for the Soviets. War, struggle, marriages, births, deaths--all these events punctuate the story of this large family.