The documentary story “Breakfast in winter at five in the morning” incorporates the author’s impressions of a trip across North America - from New York to California. The pages of the book describe meetings with passengers on a train of the American company Amtrak, intertwined with episodes from the author’s personal life, and also tells about the amazing destinies of emigrants from Russia. Nowadays, when Russians have gained freedom of movement, emigration has become a pressing problem. Perhaps the difficult fates of the emigrants described in this book will seem to many readers not only entertaining, but also instructive.