Winterland by Rae Meadows

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
" Winterland is a rich and powerful novel in which Rae Meadows displays her
talents and her subtilty as she captures the essence of sport, the power of
ambition, and the menacing hand of totalitarianism whether wielded (...)

Rae Meadows is the author of four novels, including I Will Send Rain . She
grew up admiring the Soviet gymnasts of the 1970s, and in her forties decided
to go back to the thing she loved as a child. She now practices regularly and
can be found doing back handsprings. She lives with her family in Brooklyn.

Henry Holt & Co
On Sale: Nov 7/23
5.38 x 8.25 • 288 pages
9781250834515 • $23.99 • pb
Fiction / Thrillers / Historical