The novel tells the story of a Russian youth, Alexander Grigoryev, as he grows up through Czarist Russia to the October Revolution to World War II.

At the center of the story is Grigoriev's search for the lost Arctic expedition of Captain Ivan Tatarinov and the discovery of Severnaya Zemlya.

He disappears three days after his mysterious arrival, but Sanya keeps practicing all winter - only to start speaking when he is told of his father's death.

Sanya then agrees to his best friend Pyetka's urges and the two escape to search for a better life in Turkestan, which they see as a magical land of the East.

They give each other a pledge taken from the poem Ulysses of Alfred, Lord Tennyson: "To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield".

In the orphanage he meets two new friends, Valka and Romashka, and also the strict school headmaster, Nikolay Antonich Tatarinov.

But one day, just after Sanya's beloved teacher, Korabliov, proposes to Maria Vasilyevna and gets a refusal, he overhears the teachers' cruel plot to destroy Korabliov, because he has gained the students' love and respect and has become more popular than the headmaster, and Sanya tells him of the plot.

Nikolay Antonich sends Katya back to Ensk, but Sanya goes after her, thus visiting home, the beloved Aunt Dasha and the abandoned little sister for the first time since his escape.

But there is more: in his letter Katya's father accuses Nikolay Antonich of destroying the expedition, of doing everything to make it fail and the people never to return.

However, by now she is married to Nikolay Antonich, because she till now believed, according to his own words, that he actually was the great benefactor of the expedition, accusing the Captain, his cousin, to always have been a good-for-nothing who never succeeded in anything he tried to do.

One day, during a mission, Sanya and the doctor make a forced landing in a northern village, where they find a hook from Santa Maria, Captain Tatarinov's ship.

The search expedition is cancelled, probably through the efforts of Nikolay Antonich, who refuses to acknowledge his guilt, saying he will only accept one witness - the captain himself.

Sanya manages to crawl out of the forest and is tended back to health by two little boys, and then goes to a field hospital.

He overcomes his condemnation and starts to fly again, bombing German ships invading the Northern Sea.

During one of these fights he is forced to make a landing and thus finds the remnants of the expedition, and the Captain's last letters, clearly stating that all the blame is on Nikolay Antonich.

Captain Tatarinov is buried with all honors on a shore facing the land he has discovered, and all ships passing through can see the engraving: "To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield".