Russia, XIX century. After the suicide of her father, the young St. Petersburg noblewoman Sophie Domogatskaya flees to Siberia following the adventurer and swindler Serge Dubravin, with whom she is madly in love. An incredibly huge, mysterious and completely different country from the imperial capital opens up before the girl, inhabited by robbers and gold miners, convicts and exiled revolutionaries, merchants and settlers, mine workers and natives. Here destinies are made and broken, fatal passions boil, and any person brought here, willy-nilly or not, finds himself woven into a complex web of life circumstances that do not necessarily bring happiness. In which a St. Petersburg young lady declares her love, and two unnamed young men hunt. Both of these events (insignificant at first glance) occur simultaneously and are presented to the reader only because in the future the most unexpected consequences will arise from them, in which the robbers attack the mail coach and commit terrible murder. One of our heroes miraculously remains alive and, being in a relaxed state of mind and body, recalls the past in which the robbers continue their dirty work, and Serge Dubravin walks through the Siberian taiga to who knows where, from which the reader gets to know Sophie Domogatskaya in more detail and her views on life. mainly about love, but also about death, because everyone knows how often these seemingly mutually exclusive concepts come together in which Sophie remembers that she is in love, the maid Vera begins her game, and Natalya Andreevna Domogatskaya tries to save honor and the well-being of the family, in which the reader quickly gets acquainted with the town of Yegoryevsk and the inhabitants inhabiting it, and Evpraksiya Aleksandrovna Polushkina remembers her youth and shares her plans with her son, in which the Yegoryev rulers are agitated by daring theft and murder, and the girls, as they should be, think more and more about their own, about girlish...in which Sophie is torn apart by conflicting desires, Vera gives her hope, and the reader learns about what stupidity a desperate girl of sixteen years old, whose birth Ivan Parfenovich Gordeev can decide to do, deals with affairs and reflects on the difficulties of life. The reader gets acquainted with Marfa Parfenovna, engineer Pechinoga and Ostyak Aleshey, in whom the old carbonari Monsieur Rassen appears on the stage. The maid Vera reads Marcus Aurelius. Sophie leaves St. Petersburg and in a letter to Helen Skavronskaya describes her completely esoteric attachment to her hometown. Here Monsieur Rassen leaves the stage, nevertheless leaving a deep mark on the soul of our heroine, in which Serge Dubravin sees himself as a fly, and the reader gets to know Mashenka Gordeeva in more detail, in which Ivan Parfenovich gives orders to the servants and prepares to introduce the new manager to the society. It also tells the story of the Zlatovratsky family in which the evening in the meeting continues. There are also small digressions. In the first, Ivan Parfenovich recalls the difficult decision he recently made. The second tells how Mashenka Gordeeva went to a meeting where Mashenka Gordeeva meets the new manager, and Serge, on behalf of Dmitry Opalinsky, tries to make friends with engineer Pechinoga in which the evening at the meeting finally ends, Vasya Polushkin receives compliments, and Nikolasha Polushkin almost fights with the new manager in which Serge reflects and makes friends with arithmetic, and Mashenka talks with his aunt and goes to the all-night vigil in which Dmitry Mikhailovich Opalinsky gets acquainted with the affairs , meets the shadow of her former life and a magical vision on a forest lake in which Mashenka goes to the shaman and meets Dubravin-Opalinsky in which Mashenka confesses, Nadya talks about a love date, and Serge Dubravin looks into infinity, telling about the showdown in the robber’s nest and Nikolasha Polushkin’s agreement with Klimenty Voropaev. in which Dmitry Opalinsky charms the Egoryevites, and the Egoryevites are happy to be enchanted, in which Mashenka suffers, and then he goes to Jordan and has an unexpected meeting there