On the way to Verzhavsk. Ermakov O.N.

Verzhavsk-the ancient city of Smolensk land that disappeared under the onslaught of the Polish-Lithuanian conquerors in the 17th century. Friends from the Big village of Kasplya - Ana, Ilya and Arseny - in the title of the city heard that this is a hail of a great power not only of the past, but also the future. Their teacher, a former Red Army man, conceived an expedition to this city. However, the Great Patriotic War destroys all plans, the heroes of the novel are placed in the strict conditions of choice between life and death, betrayal and serving their ideals, between the homeland of the ancestors and the power of Stalin.

The action takes place first in the pre -war, and then in the occupied village of Kasplya, in the destroyed Smolensk, in partisan forests. Historical characters are bred in the novel: the burgomaster of Smolensk Menshagin, the artist of the Mushkutov, the rector of the Assumption Cathedral, Archpriest Nikolai Shilovsky. And the legendary Verzhavsk, like a hail of Kitezh, is hidden, but not in the thicknesses of water and time, but in thunderclouds and clouds. And the path to him is long, almost endless, like that unprecedented and inhuman war.