Coming Home

By: Brittney Griner, Michelle Burford - contributor

Narrated by: Andia Winslow, Brittney Griner

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the nine-time women’s basketball icon and two-time Olympic gold medalist—a raw, revelatory account of her unfathomable detainment in Russia and her journey home.

“Compelling . . . An intimate, honest recollection of Griner’s time held captive in Russia. Coming Home reads as a deeply personal, publicly powerful documentation of what happened—what is still happening—to her body and mind.”—Slate

On February 17, 2022, Brittney Griner arrived in Moscow ready to spend the WNBA offseason playing for the Russian women’s basketball team where she had been the centerpiece of previous championship seasons. Instead, a security checkpoint became her gateway to hell when she was arrested for mistakenly carrying under one gram of medically prescribed hash oil. Brittney’s world was violently upended in a crisis she has never spoken in detail about publicly—until now.

In Coming Home, Brittney finally shares the harrowing details of her sudden arrest days before Russia invaded Ukraine; her bewilderment and isolation while navigating a foreign legal system amid her trial and sentencing; her emotional and physical anguish as the first American woman ever to endure a Russian penal colony while the #WeAreBG movement rallied for her release; the chilling prisoner swap with Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout; and her remarkable rise from hostage to global spokesperson on behalf of America’s forgotten. In haunting and vivid detail, Brittney takes listeners inside the horrors of a geopolitical nightmare spanning ten months.

And yet Coming Home is more than Brittney’s journey from captivity to freedom. In an account as gripping as it is poignant, she shares how her deep love for Cherelle, her college sweetheart and wife of six years, anchored her during their greatest storm; how her family’s support pulled her back from the brink; and how hundreds of letters from friends and neighbors lent her resolve to keep fighting. Coming Home is both a story of survival and a testament to love—the bonds that brought Brittney home to her family, and at last, to herself.

©2024 Brittney Griner (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“A visceral, harrowing account of what it’s like to be trapped inside Russia’s infamous criminal justice system, with its merciless judges and vast labor camps.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Riveting . . . Coming Home delves unflinchingly into the dehumanizing indignities the Olympic athlete suffered during the 10 months she served out of a nine-year sentence.”—The Washington Post

“A detailed accounting of Griner’s harrowing journey through a Russian legal system known for its corruption . . . Read her book, a 300-plus page deep dive on an experience many of us wouldn’t have been able to recover from, and I suspect your empathy will grow−for her and all of humanity . . . The ripple effect in life is real, and if Griner’s honesty helps even a dozen readers see the world differently, that impact, her impact, will be felt for years. Griner's book will get people talking to each other, and that's when real change begins.”—Lindsay Schnell, USA Today