The history of the Doukobor people demonstrates, putting this into practice was more difficult than envisioned and, paradoxically, has generated a great deal of conflict within the various spheres of the community itself. It is at this juncture of conflict in the decades of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s that Stenson sets his novel's action against the backdrop of the Kootenay Region in and around Nelson, BC.