Summary

The novel opens on January 27, 1945, and a Russian soldier is telling Cilka that she is free. In February she is interrogated about collaboration with the Nazis. Cilka is eighteen, and, unlike the other prisoners left behind, looks nourished despite being at Auschwitz for nearly three years. The Soviets believe she is a spy based on the reports that she prostituted herself and her ability to speak several languages. She waits in a damp, cold Krakow prison for months until her sentence of fifteen years of hard labor is handed to her in July.

In Chapter 2, Cilka is transported to the Vorkuta Gulag in Siberia in a railway car. Little food or water is provided to the inmates during their journey. A younger girl, Josie, sleeps against Cilka’s legs, and they begin a conversation. As others do the same, the women find they are...