Life is a single boot. Book 1

The memories of Tamara Petkevich, along with the works of Varlam Shalamov, Yufrosiniya Kersnovskaya, Evgenia Ginzburg, and many others, hold a firm place among the works that captured "the unified human blend of filth, goodness, cruelty, atrocities, and helplessness" and permanently marked the coordinates of the "camp" theme on the map of Russian literature of the 20th century. A young, fragile, tender, and astonishingly beautiful woman fully experienced the cup of suffering that fell to the lot of the innocent victims of political repressions; she endured exhausting labor, humiliation, hunger, and cold that turned prisoners into frightened animals. At the same time, the camp years became not only a lesson in survival under inhuman conditions for the author. The fate of Tamara Petkevich resembles a captivating novel, where love, betrayal, jealousy, separation, friendship, encounters with amazing people, the joy of motherhood, and the pain of loss intertwine - everything that defines the thrilling fullness of human life in defiance of the horrors of the camp's terrible laws and the whims of its gods and deities.