All winter long Galinka, the wild barnacle goose, had been content to stay in Misha's backyard. But now spring had come and she felt the call of the wild. She wanted to fly away to the North, along with the rest of the flock, and find her mate, the gander, again. She had become separated from him the previous fall, when they were flying south, and had come to rest near the shore in the Gulf of Finland. There she had caught her leg in a fisherman's net and been captured.

The thrilling "true" story, written by a noted Russian writer of nature tales, tells what happened when Misha and his father gave Galinka her freedom. How she found her way back to the Great Sea Route. How the dread falcon spotted her and followed her day and night, determined to make her his prey. How, all unaware that she was being pursued, she at last caught up with her own family and found her mate again.

And then, one day, the falcon struck. Just at that moment, as he swooped down on her, a shot rang out.

What happened then is too exciting for us to give the story away. And yet our tale of Galinka, the wild goose, has a happy ending after all. Where do you think we find her in the end? Secure in her nest, hardly more than a dozen feet away from the nest of the falcon. It's amazing, but apparently, there, under the protection of the very bird of prey that normally hunted her kind, she could feel safe from her enemies and could raise her little brood of goslings in peace.

From the dust jacket