Chapter One: The Beginnings Summary and Analysis

After twenty-three years in the Soviet Union, Walter J. Ciszek returned to America in October 1963. For fifteen of those years, he was in prisons including the prison camps of Siberia. Walter Ciszek wrote his book because he had been asked so many times how he endured those years. The story answers that question with honesty and without hiding anything. Ultimately, he survived by Divine Providence.

Ciszek started out as a "tough," or a bully in Shenandoah, PA. As a young teenager, he was a gang leader and street fighter. He hated everything in school except the sports and played hooky a lot. He got in trouble and spent time in a reform school. He was the seventh of fourteen kids. His parents immigrated from Poland. His father, Martin, owned a saloon. In his darkest days...