NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A deeply personal true story of one man’s spiritual odyssey and the unflagging faith which enabled him to survive the ordeal that wrenched his body and spirit to near collapse

Captured by a Russian army during World War II and convicted of being a “Vatican spy,” Jesuit Father Walter J. Ciszek spent twenty-three agonizing years in Soviet prisons and the labor camps of Siberia. Only through an utter reliance on God’s will did he manage to endure the extreme hardship. He tells of the courage he found in prayer—a courage that eased the loneliness, the pain, the frustration, the anguish, the fears, the despair. For, as Ciszek relates, the solace of spiritual contemplation gave him an inner serenity upon which he was able to draw amidst the “arrogance of evil” that surrounded him. Ciszek learns to accept the inhuman work in the infamous Siberian salt mines as a labor pleasing to God. And through that experience, he was able to turn the adverse forces of circumstance into a source of positive value and a means of drawing closer to the compassionate and never-forsaking Divine Spirit.

1. Albertyn
2. Decision to Enter Russia
3. Russia
4. Arrest and Imprisonment
5. Lubianka
6. Interrogations
7. Four Year of Purgatory
8. In Transit
9. The Body
10. Work
11. Priesthood
12. Apostolate
13. Meaning of the Mass
14. Retreats
15. Fear of Death
16. Freedom
17. Kingdom of God
18. Humility
19. Faith
20. Humanity