Winterland

A Novel

By: Rae Meadows

Narrated by: Daphne Kouma

Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

"Daphne Kouma offers a beautiful performance, meticulously detailing 8-year-old Anya's experiences. Kouma's credible Russian accents and outstanding character development make this a story filled with heart that listeners won't soon forget."- AudioFile Magazine

Perfection has a cost . . .

Reminiscent of Maggie Shipstead’s Astonish Me and Julia Phillips’s Disappearing Earth, Winterland tells the story of a previous era, shockingly pertinent today, shaped by glory and loss and finding light where none exists.

In the Soviet Union in 1973, there is perhaps no greater honor for a young girl than to be chosen to be part of the famed USSR gymnastics program. So when eight-year-old Anya is tapped, her family is thrilled. What is left of her family, that is. Years ago her mother disappeared. Anya’s only confidant is her neighbor, an older woman who survived unspeakable horrors during her ten years in a Gulag camp—and who, unbeknownst to Anya, was also her mother’s confidant and might hold the key to her disappearance. As Anya moves up the ranks of competitive gymnastics, and as other girls move down, Anya soon comes to realize that there is very little margin of error for anyone.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company.

©2022 Rae Meadows (P)2022 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"With meticulous precision and smart, poetic prose, Meadows vaults us into the chilling and eerily relevant world of Soviet-era gymnastics. Get ready to fall in love with eight-year-old Anya, who offers us a heart-wrenching view of what it means to live, love and compete in a sport where one wrong move or the whisper of dissent can ruin you. This book is full of heart." —Georgia Hunter, New York Times bestselling author of We Were the Lucky Ones

"Winterland is a story as gripping as it is a powerful rendering of the true cost of perfection. In beautifully written, thrilling prose, Rae Meadows takes us deep into the world of the USSR’s gymnastics program. As we see eight-year-old Anya rise to the top of this ultra-competitive and punishing sport, the mystery of the disappearance of her mother begins to unfold. Combining a page turning plot with fully formed characters, Meadows has written a novel that reflects the current moment. I was left breathless." —Lara Prescott, New York Times bestselling author of The Secrets We Kept

“Quoting aptly from the poems of Marina Tsvetaeva and liberally slinging Russian vulgarities along with gymnastics lingo, Meadows [...] captures the risks so recently headlined by Simone Biles and other champions in her fifth novel…Spanning the final decades of the 1900s, [Winterland] is a genre-bender that fluently integrates sports with accents from political and psychological thrillers.” —Library Journal

Excellent USSR period piece

Excellent narration and story set in the world of USSR gymnastics in the 1970s. Not perfect, but very true to the sport and the period.

Very enjoyable

Loved the characters and the story! Especially interesting if you remember the days when the Soviet Union dominated gymnastics.

Enjoyable read

Very good narration. Particularly interesting if you are familiar with the gymnastic competitions of that time period. I liked the writing style with a good balance of description, character development and story pace. Seems to be well researched also.

Great

I thought it was a sad ending. I wish it didn’t end like this but the story was riveting.

Heartbreakingly beautiful novel

Rae Meadows takes the reader into a world that is haunting and full of peril, but also one filled with hope, simple joys, and dynamic human achievement. The political background is fascinating and it resonates very much with our current complex geopolitical challenges.

How irritating…

…to be introduced to a mystery that after completing the book, is still not solved. I will not read anything else from this author.

Disappointing. A letdown

I wanted to love this. I was so excited for it. It was a letdown. It was just meh the entire way through.