Wild Happiness

A small piece of gold-bearing quartz enters a merchant's house in the Urals. Before a single shaft has been sunk, its promise begins to change the family inside.

Gordey Bragin has built his life around work, obedience and the customs inherited from his father. When a dying prospector offers him the secret of a rich vein in return for prayers for his soul, Gordey sees an extraordinary chance to secure his household's future. Soon there are new acquaintances, generous gifts and plans for a grander home. Every gain seems to demand another compromise.

As fortune unsettles the Bragins' closely governed world, old resentments find new power. The young women of the household bear the consequences of decisions made in their name, while an apparently useless dependent sees what the prosperous would prefer to overlook.

First published in 1884, Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak's novel brings the provincial mining world into intimate focus through family conflict, sharp social observation and the troubled claims of conscience. Its question remains painfully familiar: what does a fortune cost the people expected to be grateful for it?

Translated and edited by M. Smouch, this edition presents the complete twenty-six-chapter narrative, an original editorial preface and afterword, three notes preserved from the Russian source, and forty-one translator's notes explaining historical terms, customs and textual variants.