Lesya has committed a crime of passion which brings her a seven-year sentence in one of Odesa’s women’s correctional facilities. She has just given birth to her first child, and now she is entering a world populated only by women: inmates, nurses and wardens, women of all ages, wives and widows, daughters, sisters, pregnant women, and women with children too. If not for the color of the uniform, it would sometimes be hard to tell who is who.
In November 1980, the widow of A. Tolstoy was robbed. Antiques are taken out of the apartment, but, most importantly, the Royal Lily brooch, made for Louis XV, disappears of extraordinary beauty. Since Tolstoy's widow has extensive connections both in the USSR and abroad, the case receives a wide resonance, the most serious forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs are involved in the investigation, the Interior Minister Shchelokov personally monitors the progress of the investigation.