"Mama! Mama! Mamochka!" Little Varya woke from her nap in the wheat field and jumped to her feet. But her mother was nowhere in sight...

This happened long ago, at harvest time in Russia. But a little girl lost, wherever she is, has only one impulse—to find her mother as fast as possible.

"Poor little thing!" One of the women put her arms around Varya but this sympathy made the little girl want her mother all the more. She began to cry. Then they asked her name and her mother's and father's name, but Varya was too miserable to tell them. She could only sob out: "My mother is the most beautiful woman in the world."

The tallest man smiled. "Now we have something to go on."

The surprising climax and the happy ending follow quickly and they prove the old Russian proverb:

"We do not love people because they are beautiful, but they seem beautiful to us because we love them."

From the dust jacket