About the book: 2017 / In a remote taiga village, on a terrible blizzard night, the son of a political exile who died in the tsarist penal servitude, fourteen-year-old Timofey, his peer Viktor, the son of a lawyer, collided with Victor's sister Lyudmila. That night they all remain orphans: Timofey's mother dies at the hands of the punisher, Victor and Lyudmila's father shoots himself... How will their destinies turn out?.. Hatred of class enemies will lead Timofey to fight to the Pacific Ocean. Victor will be taken abroad beyond the borders of his homeland. Lyudmila will also have a difficult path. The philosopher's stone in the novel by the famous Russian writer is not a mythical mineral sought by ancient alchemists hungry for gold, but faith in man, in his inflexibility and moral strength.