The book tells the story of Bardach's transformation from placid student in pre-war Poland, to a Communist convert after the Soviet Union's bisecting of the country with Germany, and then follows him through his trial for treason and sentence of forced labor in the camps in the Kolyma region of Siberia.

Throughout, Bardach's accounts show the sacrifice, toil, and luck necessary to survive in a Stalinist-era labor camp.

The memoir opens in Poland in July 1941, during Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

In Bardach's case, he was charged with treason for the belief that he intentionally wrecked his tank, when in fact it was simply rendered inoperable while fording a river.

Bound and thrust into his self-made grave, Bardach waits for the impending shot, all the while wondering how it was that he had come to this place.