The narrative of Ignatius Rostovtsev introduces the reader to the pictures of the life of the Russian people of the pre-revolutionary years. Through the mouth of his hero, a village boy Kesha Troshin, the author talks in detail about the life and customs of one of the remote places of Eastern Siberia, which is "five days of a convoy along the Yenisei from Krasnoyarsk." The writer resurrects the pages of the history of the Siberian peasantry, recalls the living moral lessons of our past.