The Steppe

“One July morning a nine-year-old boy, Yegorushka, is taken from his mother's home across the endless southern steppe, to be put to school in a distant town. Riding with his merchant uncle and an old priest, then on top of a wool convoy among rough, strange carters, he sees heat and storm, nights by the fire, a famous rich man everyone is hunting for — and the immense, lonely beauty of the land.”