Review : Bilous Natalia. A step away from eternity. Dwellers of Volhynian towns in the light of testamens, late 16th through the 17th century. Kyiv: Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Publishing House «Prostіr», 2021. 536 p.

From the point of view of the average person, death is an undesirable topic that is usually overlooked. Instead, for historians, archaeologists, ethnographers, everything that accompanies human death is a valuable source for reproducing various aspects of the past life of society.
The monograph of Natalia Bilous “For a step to eternity. Residents of the cities of Volyn in the light of the wills of the late XVI - XVII centuries" is one of the great works dedicated to this topic. The researcher has long and fruitfully worked on the analysis of wills, as evidenced by her scientific achievements.
The wills of the citizens of early modern Volhynia have not been comprehensively studied and considered as a multifaceted source. That is why Natalia Bilous's monograph is a thorough work, supported by sources, which reveals various aspects of everyday life of Volyn residents through the prism of their preparations for the last day. It is worth noting that the author successfully considered not only the participants of the legal act, but also analyzed information about the social and property status of testators, their economic activity, family relations and a wide range of problems of early culture, attitudes to death, religious precepts and personal desires, oddities and fears.