The novel starts in the year 1941 on June 14 in Lithuania where Lina Vilkas writes a letter to her cousin Joana. The peace is interrupted when the NKVD comes knocking on the door, telling Lina, her younger brother Jonas and her mother Elena to pack their things and get out of the house. The officers give Elena 20 minutes to pack her bags and Lina realizes that they are being arrested. The father of the family, Kostas is nowhere to be seen and Lina thinks with sadness of her father as she packs in a hurry.
Elena smashes the fragile china she finds in the house to stop the soviets from using them. When one of the men comes into the room, Elena claims that it was an accident.
Elena and her children are all loaded on a truck with other men and women and Elena urges her children to don’t look at anyone to not put them in danger as well. An elderly man tries to jump out of the truck and commit suicide but the soldiers only gather him from the side of the road and throw him into the truck again. The truck stops in front of a hospital and the group finds that they are waiting for a woman who just gave birth. The group waits for 4 hours outside the hospital and Elena’s cousin comes, bringing her a package. Elena however refuses to acknowledge her cousin, hoping that the police will leave her alone. A man asks Elena if she is Kostas’s wife and Elena admits that she is. Looking at her mother, Lina remembers a time when a group of men visited them and asked her opinion about Lithuania being annexed to the Soviet Union. Before she can speak her mind, she is ushered out of the room by her father.
Back in the present time, Lina sees a woman in a bloody grown, holding a small baby in her hands being ushered in the back of the truck. The rest of the people in the truck try to help the woman and her baby they best they can and everyone pitches in with what they have.
When the truck arrives at a train station, everyone is taken out and the see more trucks arriving with more people. A man tries to separate Jonas from Elena and Lina but Elena convinces the offices to let the little boy with her by giving him a gold pocket watch.
Elena and her children are all packed into cattle cars and while the children become desperate, Elena tries to remain positive. She tries to convince her children that the train ride will not be that long in an effort to try and calm them down. When Elena and her children enter the train car, they notice that no healthy men are present.
Lina starts talking with a seventeen year old boy named Arvydas Andrius who was there with his mother. Andrius’s father, who served in the army, disappeared suddenly one day. Andrius behaves in a mature manner and he even advices Lina to be careful how she speaks about the NKVD. Elena finds that Andrius’s mother paid the NKVD to let her keep her son with her just in the same way Elena paid to make sure Jonas remains with her.
The prisoners are not let to get down and use the bathroom so they have to use a whole in the train car to relieve themselves. To keep the children occupied and distracted, Mrs. Rimas, a librarian also taken prisoner, tells the children stories.
As the night falls, the prisoners share what little food they have before falling asleep. In the middle of the night, Lina is woken up by Andrius and they go investigate a train car full with men, hoping they will find their fathers. The children find Kostas who tells them that they will be taken to Siberia and gives Lina his wedding ring and a piece of ham to eat. Andrius insists on continuing to search for his father alone while Lina and Jonas return to their mother.
When Lina and Jonas return to the train, their mother is angry with them but happy at the same time to find that Kostas is still alive.
In the morning, the prisoners are given a bucket with inedible food to eat and many refuse to do it. Lina is worried because Andrius never returned the night before but there is little she can do. When he does return, Andrius is badly beaten up and sad because he did not find his father.
A while later, the doors to the train are closed from the outside and the train starts moving again. Scared, Lina looks outside and sees priests praying and performing funeral rituals while looking at the departing train. It is then when Lina realizes that their lives are in danger.
The train arrives in Lithuania in mid-June and even though the weather is nice, the prisoners barely notice it. In Vilnius, the train car transporting the men is separated from the rest of the train before continuing on separate ways. The train continues to travel for weeks, stopping once per day to be given some food and to get rid of the dead bodies inside the trains. Lina thinks about running away but doesn’t do it and returns to the train. There, she tells her mother what she saw and Elena tries to reassure Lina by telling her that the rest of the world will find about them and eventually save them.
To pass time, Lina draws on a handkerchief in the hopes that it will reach her father and he will know where to find them. Jonas spends his time counting the children that have died. After ten days, they encounter a train with Russians who tell them that the Soviet Union and Germany are at war. Some consider this good news, thinking that the Germans will save them. The only man who sees the danger the Germans represent is the bald man who tells them just that.
Ona, the woman taken shortly after having her baby, loses her mind after her child dies. The rest of the passengers try to comfort her but she doesn’t listen to any of them. Jonas is affected by the sight of the dead child but Andrius tells her that he must get used to seeing dead bodies otherwise he will never be able to survive.
The train seems to be travelling further south but without having a clear destination in mind. The passengers speculate to wheatear the train might be going but there is no way of knowing for sure. Andrius began spending his time with Jonas, teaching him slang used by the NKVD and Russian but Lina considers Andrius a bad influence of Jonas.
Lina loses track of time and more and more people die in the train. After six weeks of traveling, the train stops and the passengers are told to exit the train cars. People in carriages appear and the prisoners soon realize that the NKVD try to sell them from profit as slaves to the Siberians. The only group that is not sold off is Elena’s group so the next day they are loaded back up into the train carts and taken to a bathhouse.
When the women get undressed, a soldier gropes Lina but her mother rushes to her aid and the soldiers leave the women alone. After being clean, the women and the men are brought back together. When Ona begins to cry again, a soldier takes her away and kills her.
The group is taken to a farm and put to live in a home with another woman. They find that they are to farm and work on the fields where they will be growing potatoes and beets for the Soviet Union. Elena is taken to the officer’s shack where she is offered a job as a translator and spy. Elena refuses however and urges her children to be careful what they talk about and what they draw while in the camp.
The Altain woman refuses to give Elena and her children food and tells them they must pay for it. Lina is shocked to see that the woman sleeps on a bed of straws and the conditions she lives in and thinks about the life she had back home.
The next day, the women are woken up and put to work in the fields, digging pits and put to do other various tasks. Elena and Mrs. Rimas theorize that people from other countries were deported as well and that there is a city not too far from where they were.
Elena urges her children to thinks about the coming winter and how they will have enough food to survive. The NKVD gave the prisoners only 300 grams of bread per day, too little to survive on considering the hard work the women were required to do. When Lina meets with Andrius, he gives her three cigaretts as a gift and Lina takes them back to her mother. Elena smokes one herself, one she gives to Jonas and the other to the woman who is the owner of the hut, Ulyushka.
The next night, the prisoners are waken up and taken to the officer’s hut where they are put to sign contracts that bind them to work for the Soviet Union for a period of twenty five years for their crimes. When people refuse to sign, they are made to sit on the floor the whole night without being allowed to sleep. At dawn, the prisoners are sent back to work in the fields where they see the body of a man killed for trying to send letters to the Lithuanian resistance.
After working for a few hours digging a pit, the commander comes and puts the women to lay face down in the pit. Thinking that they will be executed, the women say their prayers and expect to be killed. When they are not, they realize that the commander only did that to scare them and show them that he can kill them at any given moment.
Elena frequently sends Lina with food for the bald man while she talks with Andrius’s mother. Lina is rude to Andrius who comes frequently to bring them food because she believes thinking that he may be a spy but when Elena tells her the truth about how Andrius’s mother is forced to sleep with the NKVD officers to save her life and her son’s life she becomes more accepting.
As time passes by, the prisoners’ life becomes even harder as the NKVD reduces their food ratio and wakes them up in the middle of the night to convince them to sign the documents. Elena becomes thinner and thinner and Lina worries about her well-being.
The prisoners find that the Soviets have been pushed out of Lithuania but their future still remains uncertain. Elena and her children try to adapt to their new environment the best they can and they try to gather scraps of food, clothes or leather to help them through the winter.
One day, on officer named Kretzsky comes to Elena and asks her is she knows anyone who can draw. Lina offers herself and she is brought before the commander who gives Lina a photograph and a photo to draw. Lina manages to steal a pen while she is drawing for the commander and the NKVD seem surprised to see how talented Lina is.
The officer gives Lina two cigarettes as a payment before letting her go. When Lina arrives at her shack, her mother is happy to see that she is well. Elena continues to write letters hoping that one day she will be able to send them but the bald man warns her that she could put both her life and the life of her children in danger.
As the winter comes, conditions become harsher. Apart from working as a shoe maker, Jonas chops wood and gets in return splinters and logs of wood. Elena is put to teach a class of Lithuanian children and Lina is put to carry bags of grain.
After months in the camp, Mrs. Rimas receives a letter written by her husband in code. They understand that conditions are dire in every camp where the Soviets send their prisoners but the letter gives them hope because they find that at least some of their husbands are still alive.
Jonas gets sick and the NKVD refuses to give him any food because he cannot work. Other prisoners pitch in with what food they can and Andrius brings him a can of tomatoes. Elena asks Andrius to remain with them and even though he is angry with Lina he stays. When Andrius sees a drawing Lina made with him he warms up to her.
Christmas approaches but the prisoners have almost no food to share. Jonas improves slowly but Lina and Elena grow weaker because they gave their food to Jonas. To pass over this period without Kostas, Elena thinks that Kostas is on his way and that he will come to them any moment. The prisoners all meet for a celebration and they share stories and pictures with their families. The NKVD break the party apart but one soldier remains behind to look at the pictures. Despite the harsh conditions, Lina and her family still try to give small gifts to one another.
A few days after Christmas Eve, Lina is asked to draw the commander’s portrait. At first, Lina thinks of refusing but Andrius urges her to draw him as better as she can and to think about what to ask for in return. After drawing the commander, Lina asks for potatoes but the commander refuses to give them to her. Instead, Lina manages to steal some paper, pencils and a file about her family.
When Lina and Jonas get out of the office, drunk soldiers throw potatoes and other food at them. The children quickly gather the food and run to their hut. Lina stays behind with Andrius and makes him read the file. Thus, Lina finds that her father is still alive and in prison and that she had been listed as an artist. After that, Andrius agrees to take the file back and a few days later Lina sees him so she know he was able to do it and did not got hurt in the process.
On March 22, Lina turns 16 and the other prisoners prepare a surprise party for her. Andrius got a book for Lina and she kisses him for the first time, taking him by surprise.
When the snow begins to melt, Lina finds that her father is still alive. In spring, Andrius tells her that she and her mother and brother are to be relocated and Lina hopes that they will be taken someplace better. Lina and Andrius confess that they don’t want to leave each other but a separation becomes inevitable so Lina gives Andrius some of her drawings.
The ones selected to be relocated are loaded into trucks and then into cars trains again. They hear that Japan declared war on America and that the Soviets invaded Finland and that they may be shipped to America. Soon people start dying in the train cars and the soldiers dispose on the bodies in the similar way they used to do before, by letting them rot in open fields.
After a week, the train stops and the prisoners are told to get out. They are offered the chance to bathe before being out on boats to be transported even further. The prisoners are made to wait a week on the river before they continue their journey and one day, out of the blue, Jonas accuses his mother of sleeping with a NKVD member.
After traveling for a few weeks by boat, the prisoners finally arrive at Trofimovsk where they are told that they must build a fish factory and a bakery. The conditions were much worse than the ones in the previous camp and many feared that things will only become worst once the long Artic Night was to begin. The food ratio continued to be insufficient and the conditions in which the prisoners lived were even worst. The prisoners build for themselves a jurta but are not given wood or materials to build a stove so the prisoners improvised with what they had.
The bald man tells Lina one day that the reason why Kostas’s family was deported was because they helped some of their relatives escape to other countries. After that conversation, Lina remembers hearing her parents talk about some of their relatives and how it will be better for them to move to America or other European country. When Elena is confronted by Lina, she confesses that they helped her uncle go to Germany but that they hoped that they will be able to go there as well.
In November the family learns that Kostas has been killed in the prison he was held hostage at. Elena grows even weaker and the NKVD refuses to give the food to eat because the prisoners can’t work because of the bad weather. Disease starts spreading in the camp and many die because of the cold and frostbite. Soon after Christmas, Elena develops a fever and about a week later she dies. The prisoners promise to help the children burry their mother and they all participate in the funeral procession while some of the guards watch them from a distance.
In March, Jonas and other people get sick but the officers refuses to help them. When Lina thinks that he brother will die, a doctor comes and he starts taking care of the sick and give the other prisoners food and other necessities. The man, Dr. Samodurov, tells Lina that it is possible that her father is still alive and that the man who told her the news of her father’s death may have been lying just to mess with their heads. This gave Lina hope as she continued to work until finally the long Arctic winter ended.
The novel ends with an epilogue, in April 1995 in Lithuania when a man discovered a box in the ground with letters. The letters contained the story told in the novel and detailed information about the place of the camps and the conditions inside them. It is also revealed in the letters that Lina married Andrius and that she most likely remained in the camp for a few more years after the novel was ended.
