Natalya Ovodova

A story about how Senya and Vanya, notorious pranksters and hooligans, were forced by circumstances to take care of two little nephews of a pioneer leader and became victims of these mischievous boys' antics.

Set in 1955 when many migrated from Russia to the Steppes of Kazakhstan, this is the trip back to the Canal from the frontier and farms by a number of people who tell their settler stories. Alyonka Muratova is a winsome 13 year old who talks Dmitry Prokovich, the chief mechanic for the Soviet, into giving up his seat in the truck to a young mother with her infant daughter. Then Alyonka and Dmitry share the back of the open truck with a young woman, newly graduated dentist who has not been able to find a position, Stefan, a hitchhiker with a dog who hopes his upper-class wife will return to him and the countryside, and Vasselina Petrovolka, a woman who lost one of her twin daughters in a riding accident by the river shortly after they arrived, and now is returning to tell the other twin of her sister's fate. A warm hearted look at common folks traveling in the frontier.

Year 1947... Yegor Trubnikov is giving all his powers to make life in his own Kolhoz better.