1928. The book begins: Winter...a bitter, relentless cold lying heavy upon the slopes and eddying thick in the hollows; leafless limbs reaching upward toward the grey skies, like the scarred fingers of hands raised in prayer; white-locked farms huddling in half forsaken valleys; an occasional gaunt chateau standing back against the hills, dark, lonely, as some strange bird of ill omen might stand awaiting the hunter's kill; frozen highways winding away through thin forests to a dead skyline, with only now and again the crunch of hoofs in the snow and the far jingle of droshky bells. Winter...wolves howling in the north over a mutilated carcass; a great eagle hovering in the distant sky; dark blotches upon the sodden snow; a specter stalking out of Russia-bleeding feet and hands, and a bleeding heart. Winter...a Polish cross.