The Endless Steppe

The Endless Steppe is a young adult memoir in which Esther Hautzig, the author, details her five-year exile in Siberia, from June 1941 to March 1946. When the American politician and diplomat Adlai E. Stevenson visited the village of Rubtsovsk and wrote about it, Esther Hautzig wrote to him to tell him about her time living there. Stevenson suggested that Esther write about her experience. Published in 1968, during the Cold War, the book resonated with public interest in Communist Russia. The Endless Steppe won the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award in 1969 and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1971.

The page numbers in this guide correspond to the 2018 revised paperback edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books.

Plot Summary

The setting of the book is June 1941, in the Polish city of Vilna. The narrator is Esther Rudomin, a 10-year-old Jewish girl raised in a close-knit, upper-middle-class family. Esther’s predictable world is interrupted when Esther, her parents, and her paternal grandparents are arrested by Russian soldiers and labeled enemies of the state. Arriving at a train station, they are assigned to cattle cars, and Esther’s grandfather is separated from the rest of the family. After a journey of several weeks in the cramped cattle car, the train passengers arrive in Rubtsovsk, a Siberian village. Esther and her family are assigned to a gypsum mine, where they live in a barracks are forced to do manual labor.

One Sunday, Esther and Grandmother are allowed to walk from the gypsum mine to the village market. Esther longs to live close to Rubtsovsk, and her wish comes true when the Polish deportees are informed that they have been granted amnesty. The Rudomins move to barracks close to the village, and Esther’s parents are assigned jobs. Later, they move into a hut with a young Siberian couple.

Esther is enrolled in school. Despite the unfamiliar language, a harsh teacher, and the challenge of making a best friend, Esther enjoys attending school. When she is diagnosed with bronchitis, however, she is confined to the hut for the winter. When the Rudomins learn of Grandfather’s death, Grandmother is stricken with grief.

One day, Samuel, Esther’s father, is taken by the Russian secret police and interrogated. They try to bribe him to become a spy, but Samuel refuses; he returns to his family the next day, exhausted and shaken. In the spring, Esther is allowed to return to school and she enjoys it. That summer, the Rudomins get permission to occupy an empty hut in another part of the village. They enjoy their privacy and are dismayed when a beggar is assigned to live with them. The beggar surprises them, however; they get to know him and like him.

Samuel receives a letter one day instructing him to report near the front lines. While Samuel hopes for a positive outcome, Esther is crushed. Esther comes down with a case of the flu and, to cheer her up, her mother, Raya, throws her a birthday party. One day, Esther accidentally loses some money; although Raya is gracious about her mistake, Esther is determined to earn some rubles by knitting and embroidering.

Through their friends Yozia and Zaya, members of the elite, Raya and Esther are able to secure a job living in the warm home of a factory director for the winter. Although it is only temporary, the job helps them survive the most brutal months of winter. Esther enters a declamation contest at school but, on the day of the contest, her teacher cruelly tries to disqualify her because she does not have shoes. Esther becomes obsessed with getting a pair of shoes and eventually succeeds.

Esther transfers to a different school; although she appreciates the higher level of education, she struggles again with feeling like an outsider. One day, Esther is caught in a dangerous winter storm; the sound of Raya’s voice calls her back to the safety of her hut. Esther excels in school and gains the attention of her literature teacher. In an attempt to meet a boy she is in love with, Esther runs for and wins the position of school newspaper editor.

The good news of the end of the war, and the terrible news of the Holocaust in Poland, arrive in Rubtsovsk. Esther’s father writes that he will be going back to Poland and will meet them there. To Raya’s horror, and Esther’s own surprise, Esther feels conflicted; she is afraid of returning to Poland and upset to leave her life in Siberia. As a way to prepare for her journey, Esther earns enough money to buy new leather boots and a quilted jacket. She says goodbye to her friends and to the steppe and, along with other Polish deportees, boards a train back to Poland. She is startled by the ways Poland has changed but overjoyed to see her father waiting at the train station. Reunited, the Rudomins step out of their exile and into their new life together.