The Peasants

In the first glow of spring, the Polish countryside awakens like a sacred promise, and Agata, an old beggar returning to Lipka, feels its beauty as blessing, mercy, and homecoming. Weak, coughing, and determined to die in her native village with dignity, she moves through church, mill, cottages, and fields, grieving the emptiness around her and the loss of the laboring men who should be tending the land. What she finds is a village shaken by unrest: arrests, imprisonment, and violence have left the farms half-wild, the women burdened, and Boryna's household struggling under Hanka's practical authority. As spring shifts from mist and rain to sudden greening heat, the countryside flourishes beyond Lipka even as its people endure absence, gossip, and hardship. Hanka's churching, the arrival of the Tsiganes, and the villagers' fevered stories about theft, sorcery, and haunting deepen the atmosphere of superstition and unease. Through reverent nature writing, peasant labor, faith, and folklore, the novel reveals a world where rebirth and suffering, wonder and fear, are inseparable. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.