Jacob Volkov was born in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan. When he was only a year old, his family, along with two small villages, escaped to Persia (now Iran) with their wagons and cattle. One of the Persian warlords gifted them a village, which these refugees converted into a Russian village. At the age of 16, he left his family and traveled to Tehran, the capital of Iran, to study in an American mission school. There, he studied the English language and other subjects in Farsi, while working in an American sergeant's family in Tehran. After immigrating to the United States of America, he served in the US Army in Japan during the Korean Conflict as a medic. At the end of his military service, he attended college and earned BA and MA degrees in English and Russian. Upon graduation, he taught these languages in high school and College. He is retired now and lives with his wife of 63 years in Fresno.

Trekking Through Trials provides a tiny glimpse of a vast world of people who suffered, and even lost their lives, for their principles. In this book, you will meet a group of Russian peasants, whose unwavering spirituality and steadfast faith in God sustained them in perilous times. Despite their own faulty plans, God was all the while preparing for them their way of escape long before their suffering surfaced--turning their trials into blessings.

Here, you will meet daring and colorful characters in unlikeliest situations and see how these refugees coped and adapted to life in a Muslim country. These peasants learned quickly, though sometimes stubbornly, how to adapt to Persian culture and politics of the early 20^th century. You will be taken from the yurts of the Turkmen nomads to the huts of Persian peasants, from the plush estates of the privileged to the palace of the Shah. You will attend a Persian peasant wedding and festive feast. In the end you will witness how God turned the self-exile of a few dozen families into their own personal Canaan.