Nineteen Thirty-Five, Soviet Russia. Josef Dobrov is only a soldier and wants it to stay that way, to be someone nobody notices. Some of his friends have been noticed and it did not end well for them. One of them is on the train of gulag-bound prisoners he is guarding. Not his affair, says Josef. He has no intention of getting into trouble. But high in the Urals, fate throws the young soldier into not only trouble but a whole new world, a world of...