About the book: 2011 / Young engineer Alexei Pokrovsky, yesterday a graduate of the Imperial Institute of Transport, is assigned to a grandiose construction project - the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. For a novice specialist, this is very important, maybe even the work of his whole life, and Pokrovsky leaves for Siberia, to the Trans-Baikal steppes, along with hundreds and thousands of other pioneer builders. Over time, the land beyond Baikal becomes a second homeland for people who came from the western provinces. Having gone through hardships, illnesses, the bloody turmoil of the first revolution, often coming into conflict with themselves, Pokrovsky and his comrades achieve the main goal - to build a railway in a quality and timely manner in wild off-road conditions in order to meet the first passenger train in Vladivostok on the shores of the Pacific Ocean.