"Emigration is death," says one of the characters to the hero of this book, a young man who grew up in a family of Moscow scientists and moved to America. Having failed to take root there either in a provincial southern town in the house of his father, a retired black military man, or in the Jewish emigrant environment on Brighton Beach, he is trying to find a foothold to start a new life by getting a job at a boarding school for the elderly from the USSR.In the course of the action, which is given dynamism by a family-historical investigation and even elements of a police detective, a young man learns about the difficult moral choices of people dear to him during the years of Soviet power and their subsequent attempt to return to forgotten moral roots. The hope of finding solid ground underfoot appears when a seemingly lost love returns to the hero's life.