Niketa was seventeen, likable, adventurous, and curious about everything, especially life. He lived in the early 1900s outside a small village in the southwestern part of Russia with his father, mother, and six siblings. They were a wealthy farming family. He was the youngest of the children, and everyone loved him. He lived a peaceful life-that is, until he saved his cousin's life. That day changed everything. He was on top of the world one day, but then life began to change-changes that led to the betrayal of his brother, a serious injury, death, and his running away from his family and himself.

He did the one thing he always did when confused. He ran away. But life as we know it has many twists and turns, and in Niketa's life, it became disastrous. He ran away from his family and traveled to Minsk where he believed his grandfather would help him find himself and the answers he was looking for. On his journey to Minsk, Niketa met William, a young university student who was a Bolshevik and had recently escaped from a Russian Gulag. William had been trying to change the world in tsarist Russia, and Niketa became enthralled with William's ideals. However, Niketa also found that a Cossack captain was tracking William, and it seemed as if the captain always knew where they were going. The captain was also a fiend, a thug from the Gulag who would stop at nothing to find William and take him back to the Gulag-dead or alive. Although Niketa found understanding with William and a way out of some of his problems, he also found more hurt and death.