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	Liepman Literary Agency Marc Koralnik
Original language
English
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Fiction & Related items
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https://raemeadows.com/

MOTHERLAND

Rae Meadows

In 1973 Soviet Union, there was no greater honor for a young girl than to be chosen by the motherland to be a part of their famed gymnastics program. Eight year old Anya Yurievna is an unlikely candidate. She lives in Norilsk, north of the Arctic Circle, 3000 kilometers from Moscow. Her father is an alcoholic. Her mother, a former ballerina, disappeared three years ago. And her best friend is her elderly neighbor who spent ten years in the gulag as a political prisoner who fills her head with things Anya knows not to repeat.

When strong willed Anya is selected, everyone around her realizes there is really no choice. There is no free will in the Soviet Union. She will leave school, her friends, and her home, to train. She will give up everything to honor the motherland. She will risk her health, her family, her life, for gold, but she will never stop looking for her mother.

Rae Meadows is the author of Calling Out, which received the 2006 Utah Book Award for fiction, No One Tells Everything, a Poets & Writers Notable Novel, and the widely praised novel, Mercy Train and I Will Send Rain. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Brooklyn, New York.

Available products
Book Published 2023-05-11 by Henry Holt & Company

Comments

Meadows' absorbing fifth novel follows a promising young Soviet gymnast as she enters a ruthless sports system that emphasizes winning at all costs Writing with a confidence based on excellent research, Meadows vividly depicts the Soviet training systemand its abuses An enlightening portrait of a now-vanished world.

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"Meadows paints a poignant portrait of life behind the Iron Curtain, palpably conveying her vividly rendered characters' deprivation, longing, and self-sacrifice. Fans of Megan Abbott's You Will Know Me should take note."

[A] story of an era shaped by glory and loss and about forging a life when you no longer are what you were.

"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."

Quoting aptly from the poems of Marina Tsvetaeva and liberally slinging Russian vulgarities along with gymnastics lingo, Meadows (I Will Send Rain) 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.

The 33 Most Anticipated Books Of November 2022 https://www.bustle.com/entertainment/best-new-books-november-2022

"Meadows' absorbing fifth novel follows a promising young Soviet gymnast as she enters a ruthless sports system that emphasizes winning at all costs... Writing with a confidence based on excellent research, Meadows vividly depicts the Soviet training systemand its abuses... An enlightening portrait of a now-vanished world."

Rae Meadows brings the gruelling world of Olympic dreams to vivid life in Winterland, a searing tale of a young girl finding her path in Soviet-era gymnastics. Anya's childhood is centered around the mysterious disappearance of her mother, an event that anchors the book in a spiral of questions. Heart-breaking and thought-provoking, imbued with the beautiful fragility and terror of athletic excellence, this is a story of unfolding friendship and adversity that will linger with readers for long afterwards.

"Meadows skilfully articulates the risks and rewards of high-level competition, the divine feeling of being chosen to represent one's country and the fragility of the human body. For those who loved Hannah Orenstein's Head over Heels and Alena Dillon's The Happiest Girl in the World, Winterland is a historic look back at a generation of Soviet talent, ambition, and sacrifice, inside and outside the gym."

"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."

"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."

Znanje

"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 bookan 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 of unimaginable loss and sacrifice. Both a searingly immersive tale and an important book for our times, Winterland is a must-read, for it will remind you that while we may live in a world divided, we are, as individuals, all similarly fragile, hopeful, and ultimately human at our core. Impeccably researched and beautifully written."

Rae Meadows always writes with absolute clarity and power, and it is a pleasure to soar through the air with her in Winterland, weightless, strong, and capable of anything.

https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2022/1116/Mystery-movies-and-Arthur-Miller-enliven-November-s-10-best-books