The author of this book was born in the city of Koryazhma, Kotlas district, Arkhangelsk region, and spent his childhood and youth in the village of Novoshino, Krasnoborsky district. After long and painstaking work collecting materials, Claudius Aleksandrovich summarized them in a book in which he showed the hard work of the northern peasantry, customs and morals, spoke about fellow countrymen, friends from childhood and youth, about work on the collective farm, about war and post-war times, and revealed the causes of the collapse and the death of such large villages as Novoshino and Shadrino. But they live in his memory and in the memory of his fellow countrymen.