The harsh historical backdrop of war, deportation, and racial discrimination sets the stage for the personal stories in The Endless Steppe. However, Hautzig does not focus on the profound moral dilemmas posed by the war’s atrocities. Instead, the characters in her narrative accept the tragic nature of life and, despite frequently feeling sorrowful, ill, and demoralized, they continue to face the numerous challenges to their physical and emotional well-being. Hautzig also avoids explicitly highlighting the role of religious faith as a shield against adversity. The resilience shown by Esther and her family emerges naturally from the story itself, without any direct commentary on its significance. The narrative effectively underscores Hautzig's theme that individuals must find inner strength to endure and overcome evil.

While the Rudomins appear resilient and brave, it is Esther's journey that shapes The Endless Steppe and classifies it as a true bildungsroman—a tale of a young person’s development and initiation into adulthood. Hautzig’s theme unfolds as Esther matures throughout the story.

Within a matter of weeks, ten-year-old Esther is uprooted from her childhood home, filled with sunshine, flowers, and family. She endures a long, exhausting journey to an unknown place with her visibly shaken parents and grandparents. She witnesses the forced separation of her grandfather from the rest of the family and arrives, along with other "capitalist enemies," at a desolate village in Siberia.

Esther cannot comprehend why she and her family have been arrested and punished. Being an intelligent and curious child, she constantly questions their predicament. When Russian soldiers invade her home and order her parents to the ground, she ignores her mother’s warning and demands an explanation for the arrest. During their transport to Siberia in a cattle car, she innocently asks her mother where the bathroom is. Similarly, at Rubtsovsk, she inquires of the hostile Comrade Popravka, a soldier overseeing the barracks, where she can find a drink of water. After the initial shock of her abrupt departure, Esther accepts her reality and bravely asks questions that aid her adaptation. As she matures, Esther's inquisitive nature remains a defining trait. Despite living through a war in harsh conditions in a foreign land, she continues to be a little girl growing up, ever curious about the world around her.

The turbulence, rolling across thousands of miles of steppe, seemed powerful enough to sweep the small hut away.
At school, Esther faces the impatience of her stern teacher, Raisa Nikitovna, and befriends Svetlana, who eventually becomes her closest companion. Proud of her Jewish-Polish heritage, Esther still longs to be accepted by her peers. She strives to lead a normal life, enjoying making new friends, editing the school paper, and harboring a crush on a handsome classmate, Yuri Shurik. Her love for reading is partly fueled by her literature teacher, Anna Semyonovna.

Despite this, Esther worries about her father, who, after nearly two years in Siberia, is sent to work near the front lines. She tries to console her mother and grandmother during her father's absence, using her knitting skills to earn extra money for the family. Esther manages these concerns by diligently meeting the challenging demands of a schoolgirl's life in Siberia.

Esther's father, Samuel Rudomin, whom she calls "Tata" ("Papa" in Polish), dotes on her and lovingly nicknames her "Lalinka." Although he is an electrical engineer, in Siberia, he works as a horse and cart driver at the gypsum mine. Frustrated by his inability to shield his family from the "insanity" of the war, he constantly tries to lift their spirits with humorous stories and a positive outlook.

Raya Rudomin, Esther's mother,...