Andrey Pavlovich Buzykin, who makes a living by teaching at an institute and translating English literature, is cheating on his wife. Buzykin's main problem is that he's a kind man with a weak character. The lies he is telling his wife all the time are inconvincing, but he never has the courage to tell her the truth. His lover, Alla, is aware of his family life, but gets offended when, for example, he cannot meet her so that he doesn't come home late, or when he doesn't want to go home in a new jacket she gives him to avoid having to explain to his wife. Alla and Nina, Andrei's wife, both leave him, forgive him, and return to him at the same time, and Andrei continues with this kind of life, full of suffering and deceit. Finally, both women are so fed up with his lies that they don't believe him even when he is telling the truth...

Set in 1955 when many migrated from Russia to the Steppes of Kazakhstan, this is the trip back to the Canal from the frontier and farms by a number of people who tell their settler stories. Alyonka Muratova is a winsome 13 year old who talks Dmitry Prokovich, the chief mechanic for the Soviet, into giving up his seat in the truck to a young mother with her infant daughter. Then Alyonka and Dmitry share the back of the open truck with a young woman, newly graduated dentist who has not been able to find a position, Stefan, a hitchhiker with a dog who hopes his upper-class wife will return to him and the countryside, and Vasselina Petrovolka, a woman who lost one of her twin daughters in a riding accident by the river shortly after they arrived, and now is returning to tell the other twin of her sister's fate. A warm hearted look at common folks traveling in the frontier.

A young girl decides to join a Hussar squadron and fight against Napoleon. Dressed as a man, she proves herself an excellent, even heroic soldier, but complications ensue when her real identity is revealed.