Thrillers & Suspense
![Rae Meadows - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_rae_meadows.jpg)
Winterland: A Novel
Perfection has a cost . . . With transporting prose and meticulous detail, set in an era that remains shockingly relevant today, Winterland tells a story of glory, loss, hope, and determination, and of finding light where none exists.
Soviet Union, 1973: There is perhaps no greater honor for a young girl than to be chosen for the famed USSR gymnastics program. When eight-year-old Anya is selected, her family is thrilled. What is left of her family, that is. Years ago, her mother disappeared without a trace, leaving Anya's father devastated and their lives dark and quiet in the bitter cold of Siberia. Anya's only confidant is her neighbor, an older woman who survived unspeakable horrors during her ten years imprisoned 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 rises through the ranks of competitive gymnastics, and as other girls fall from grace, she soon comes to realize that there is very little margin of error for anyone and so much to lose.
Soviet Union, 1973: There is perhaps no greater honor for a young girl than to be chosen for the famed USSR gymnastics program. When eight-year-old Anya is selected, her family is thrilled. What is left of her family, that is. Years ago, her mother disappeared without a trace, leaving Anya's father devastated and their lives dark and quiet in the bitter cold of Siberia. Anya's only confidant is her neighbor, an older woman who survived unspeakable horrors during her ten years imprisoned 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 rises through the ranks of competitive gymnastics, and as other girls fall from grace, she soon comes to realize that there is very little margin of error for anyone and so much to lose.
Editorial 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
"[Rae Meadows's] gemlike novel... rests―panting, gasping, breathing―in the span between Anya's tiny but powerful shoulders. With every cracking bone and snapped ligament, we long for Anya's success even as it imperils her. We long for her rescue even as we both know that success means buying only a little more time before the end."
–Megan Abbott, The New York Times
"Winterland gripped me from the first page. I loved this story of strong women fighting to keep their humanity in the face of terrible forces: Siberian winters, demanding gymnastics coaches, lost mothers and Gulag camps. Rae Meadows is a gifted writer, and I was thrilled to find myself in a landscape I knew nothing about, rooting for a young gymnast named Anya."
―Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward
"In the best of cases, books are more than just entertainment. Sometimes, they play a vital role in connecting us during divided times, across generations and cultures, reminding us that as human beings, we all have the common ground of love and want and pain. Winterland is one such book―an intimate look at the Soviet Union in the 1970s, a lost mother, and a daughter's journey to become a star Olympic gymnast, forced to choose between what's right for her and what's asked of her by a state that demands the impossible. Steeped in rich cultural detail and written with the confidence of someone who has spent much time in the trenches of gyms just like the ones Anya inhabits, Winterland will immerse you in rich period detail, the joy and anguish of first love, and the heartache ...
―Georgia Hunter, New York Times bestselling author of We Were the Lucky Ones
"[Rae Meadows's] gemlike novel... rests―panting, gasping, breathing―in the span between Anya's tiny but powerful shoulders. With every cracking bone and snapped ligament, we long for Anya's success even as it imperils her. We long for her rescue even as we both know that success means buying only a little more time before the end."
–Megan Abbott, The New York Times
"Winterland gripped me from the first page. I loved this story of strong women fighting to keep their humanity in the face of terrible forces: Siberian winters, demanding gymnastics coaches, lost mothers and Gulag camps. Rae Meadows is a gifted writer, and I was thrilled to find myself in a landscape I knew nothing about, rooting for a young gymnast named Anya."
―Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward
"In the best of cases, books are more than just entertainment. Sometimes, they play a vital role in connecting us during divided times, across generations and cultures, reminding us that as human beings, we all have the common ground of love and want and pain. Winterland is one such book―an intimate look at the Soviet Union in the 1970s, a lost mother, and a daughter's journey to become a star Olympic gymnast, forced to choose between what's right for her and what's asked of her by a state that demands the impossible. Steeped in rich cultural detail and written with the confidence of someone who has spent much time in the trenches of gyms just like the ones Anya inhabits, Winterland will immerse you in rich period detail, the joy and anguish of first love, and the heartache ...
Readers Top Reviews
Timothy J. Bazzett
Full disclosure: I didn't think I'd like this book very much. I ordered it mostly because my wife and daughter have been gymnastics fans as long as I can remember. And WINTERLAND is about gymnastics, but it's a lot more than just a chick-lit sports book. It is literary historical fiction at its very best. This Rae Meadows is just a flat out wonderful writer.Talented with a capital T! We follow the story of Anya Petrov from the time she is eight to well into her thirties, in a story that takes us from the former Soviet Union in the 70s to Brooklyn in the late 90s. Anya, daughter of a former Bolshoi ballerina, is picked out as a promising gymnast for the local state-sponsored program in Norilsk (Siberia), an honor which includes a stipend for her family. She is immediately withdrawn from school and thrust into a rigid, often cruel, daily regime of training and strict dieting. Academics are largely ignored. Normal growth and development are discouraged, as evidenced in a comment by a clinic doctor, who asks Anya's age. Learning she is almost in nine, he responds - "'I have something to stop the -' He made a vague hand gesture over his chest to indicate breasts. 'In a couple years. It's a new era. They want to keep them little girls as long as possible.'" Anya's mother had gone missing when she was five, so her father, Yuri, who had been raising her alone, was grateful for Anya's talent and her seeming good fortune in being selected for the program. Anya shows an iron determination in upping her game and advances rapidly, moving, along with her coach, Anatoly, to a more modern training camp near Moscow. The competition is fierce, but although friendships between the gymnasts were rare, Anya makes one very close friend in her roommate, Elena, a few years older, who is one of the brightest up and coming stars in the Soviet system. Because we learn, by this time the Soviet stars that Anya had worshipped from afar, were nearly done. "Nellie Kim was on beam, sulking ... She was beautiful and intense - half Korean, half Tatar, from Tajikistan - the first to do a double back Salto - two full flips - at the Olympics. She was as mean as vinegar. No one talked to her. 'She's twenty,' Anatoly had said. 'She's done anyway. Like your Korbut.'" And as for Olga Korbut - "... now she was a hardened version of herself ... her face worn, angry. Korbut was twenty-two, but she'd aged well beyond that, her body was pared to sinews. She smoked ... Here was a woman, posing as the little girl. Anatoly was right; she was over." Anya continues to excel, finally joining the Soviet team for the Moscow Olympics (boycotted by the U.S. and other countries because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan). But along the way she learns some hard facts about competitive gymnastics, best expressed by a former gymnast forced to quit wh...
