In 1943, when the Germans retreated from Ukraine, she moved to Perm (called Molotov at that time). She worked for a local newspaper and published her first novel "The Pirozhkov Family" (later renamed "Yevdokia", the source of a Soviet film produced by Tatyana Lioznova in 1961). In 1944, as a journalist, she was embedded for two months with a hospital train about which she wrote the novel "Sputniki" (1946; translated as "The Train") that brought her a Stalin Prize in 1947. There was a Soviet Film "Poezd miloserdiya" (Train of Mercy, 1961) and another TV-film Na vsyu ostavshuyuysya zhizn' (For the Rest of One's Life, 1975) based on the novel; the scenario for the later film was written by Panova's son Boris Vakhtin.