Summary

Cilka gets her first ambulance call, enters a collapsing mine tunnel, and shows poise and calm. The novel flashbacks to 1943, and a Nazi offers candy to the children in Auschwitz. He selects four and drives away. Cilka says a prayer for their young souls. Back in the gulag, Cilka recalls her fifteenth birthday and her father almost letting her drive a car for the first time. In Chapter 22 Cilka goes on an ambulance run to a collapsed crane, but the injured man dies. Summer begins again in Chapter 23, and the hut-mates walk about camp and visit Josie and Natia. Josie asks Cilka to help her keep her child. Cilka and the ambulance crew have a call at the commander’s house; the commander’s daughter, Katya, has appendicitis and is successfully operated on. In Chapter 24 the commander’s wife, Maria, so impressed with...