The author of this book, Evfrosiniya Antonovna Kersnovskaya (1907–1994), was born in Odessa into a noble family. During the civil war, the family escaped persecution by the Bolsheviks and moved to their family estate in Bessarabia, which was then part of Romania. Euphrosyne, through her labor, raises the decaying farm and becomes a farmer. After the entry of Soviet troops into Bessarabia in 1940, the Kersnovsky mother and daughter, as former landowners, were kicked out of their home. In 1941, she, like many other Bessarabians, was exiled to Siberia for logging. There she stands up for the weak, defenseless. For this she faces starvation. She decides to escape. Before she was captured, she walked one and a half thousand kilometers through the taiga. She is tried and sentenced to death. Although she refuses to write a petition for clemency, the execution is replaced with ten years in the camps. In the Norilsk camp she works in a hospital and morgue, then, of her own free will, she does the hardest work - mining. There she feels freer - “scoundrels don’t go underground.” After being released from exile, in Essentuki, in 1964-68, at her mother’s request, she writes about her experiences, these 12 notebooks are illustrated with her watercolor drawings (703 drawings).

***Notes from the first to the twelfth (full text), without illustrations.