The action of the novel "Big Land" covers forty years of the life of the steppe village - from the Russo-Japanese War to the spring of 1943. Representatives of several generations of peasants live and operate in it, in particular the Logunov family, where the "golden root" of the clan is Avdotya, a folk poetess, about whom M. Gorky said: "It is necessary that the warrior Avdotya Nuzhda sing a waste to the old world."