The Siberian

When a sudden storm overturns their family’s boat on a remote Siberian lake, thirteen-year-old Katya, her brother Stas, their mother, and the family’s loyal dog Kira are left stranded in the vast taiga. Supplies are gone. Their father has vanished. And night is closing in.

Here, survival is not only about hunger and cold but about the unseen eyes watching from the forest. The Amur tiger (largest of the great cats, master of the taiga) prowls these woods. For centuries, the Udege and other indigenous peoples have called this tiger Amba, a kinsman spirit who rules the forest and decides the fate of those who enter. Shamans speak of its mimicry, voices in the trees, and laughter in the dark, while legends whisper of tigers who walk between the world of humans and spirits.

Katya longs to be more than her brother’s keeper. But as she leads her fractured family through grief, hunger, and the shadow of the tiger, her journal becomes both a survival map and a record of their encounter with the wild, where folklore and reality blur, and every step could be their last.

Blending survival, myth, and the fierce beauty of the Siberian wilderness, The Siberian is a young adult adventure about resilience, family, and the spirit of the wild itself.