From the penultimate Turkish campaign, the Don Cossack Prokofy Melekhov brought home, to the village of Veshenskaya, a beautiful Turkish woman. She subsequently gave birth to a son, Panteley Melekhov, who decided to pursue the improvement of the economy, married a local Don Cossack woman. She gave birth to two sons, Petro and Grishka. The youngest son was wildly handsome, with a crooked nose, with an expressive Cossack forelock, and had a frenzied disposition.
Often he goes fishing with his father, starts talking about women living in the village, sells fish to a local entrepreneur, flirts with Astakhova.
When Aksinya was sixteen years old, she was raped by her father. She was then given in marriage to a local farmer. He often beat her, cheated on her with other farm Cossacks. Gregory liked her. But the worst thing that happened in her life woke up a reciprocal feeling to Grisha. Returning Stepan brutally beats his wife, and Grigory's father decided to woo Natalia Korshunova.
All this does not add happiness to both families. Everyone suffers. Both families break up. Natalia goes to her parents, Aksinya to Grigory, from whom a daughter soon appears. Natalya attempts to commit suicide, which is unsuccessful. There is a scar on the neck and in the soul on the heart. She is afraid of humiliating uncertainty, but she cannot do anything with herself.
Soon the Don Cossack was taken away for four years. The war breaks out, and the Cossacks are taken to the Austrian border. In the first battle, he kills the enemy, and then suffers from this incident. In the next battle, Grigory is seriously wounded in the head, and he is taken to the capital hospital for treatment. A friend in the hospital talks badly about the existing time, which is falling apart, reveals the real causes of the war. The Don Cossack is horrified, feeling how his ideas about the service, about the country are crumbling.
Natalia, the wife of a Don Cossack, soon dies of an unsuccessful pregnancy. He loved his wife in his own way: his suffering is intensified by a sense of guilt for this death. Fighting on the side of the White Guards, then on the side of the Red Guards, completely confused, he decides to go with Aksinya to the Kuban. But along the way, a patrol comes across, wounding a mortally beloved woman. And Grisha, raising his head, sees nothing in front of him, except for his misfortune. And the wound sores in my chest that will never heal.
