Perfection has a cost . . . With transporting prose and meticulous detail, set in an era that remains shockingly relevant today, Rae Meadows's 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.

A rich, luminous novel of three remarkable women connected across a century by a family secret and by the fierce brilliance of their love

Samantha's mother has been dead almost a year when the box arrives on her doorstep. In it, she finds recipe cards, keepsakes, letters--relics of her mother Iris's past. But as Sam sifts through these family treasures, she uncovers evidence that her grandmother, Violet, had a much more difficult childhood then she could have ever imagined. And Sam, a struggling new mother herself, begins to see her own burdens in a completely different light. Moving from the tempered calm of contemporary Madison, Wisconsin to the seedy underbelly of early twentieth century New York, we come face to face with a haunting piece of America's past: From 1854 to 1929 orphan trains from New York transported 150,000 to 200,000 destitute, orphaned or abandoned children across the country to find homes on farms in the Midwest. Rae Meadows takes us on our own journey of discovery in "Mercy Train (originally published as "Mothers & Daughters")," an affecting and wonderfully woven novel about three generations of motherhood, family, and the surprising sacrifices we make for the people we love.