The Winter Station

by Jody Shields Narrated by Simon Vance

Overview

An aristocratic Russian doctor races to contain a deadly plague in an outpost city in Manchuria - before it spreads to the rest of the world.

1910: people are mysteriously dying at an alarming rate in the Russian-ruled city of Kharbin, a major railway outpost in Northern China. Strangely, some of the dead bodies vanish before they can be identified.

During a dangerously cold winter in a city gripped by fear, the Baron, a wealthy Russian aristocrat and the city's medical commissioner, is determined to stop this mysterious plague. Battling local customs, an occupying army, and a brutal epidemic with no name, the Baron is torn between duty and compassion, between Western medical science and respect for Chinese tradition. His allies include a French doctor, a black marketeer, and a charismatic Chinese dwarf. His greatest refuge is the intimacy he shares with his young Chinese wife - but she has secrets of her own.

Based on a true story that has been lost to history, set during the last days of imperial Russia, The Winter Station is a richly textured and brilliant novel about mortality, fear and love.

Editorial Reviews

OCTOBER 2018 - AudioFile

A gifted narrator can often salvage a mediocre text, but given a finely written novel, as Simon Vance has here, the result is a showcase of the unique pleasures and sublime artistry of audiobook listening. Set in one of the most remote corners of the world, Shields’s medical thriller is based on an outbreak of bubonic plague in Manchuria in 1910. The voices and accents are diverse, and Vance is a master at rendering character and at maintaining narrative pace and momentum. Most outstanding, however, are the eloquent descriptions of the bleak Eastern landscape and the ragtag communities clustered around the Trans-Siberian Railway. While the narrative is chilling and gripping, Shields’s prose is incandescent, and her narrator is one of the most gifted and accomplished working today. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

10/16/2017
The outbreak of plague in Manchuria during the winter of 1910–1911 tests a Russian doctor’s physical, emotional, and moral stamina in Shields’s accomplished third novel (after The Fig Eater and The Crimson Portrait). When Chief Medical Examiner Baron Rozher Alexandrovich von Budberg learns that two bodies were whisked away from outside the Kharbin train station, he wonders why he wasn’t notified. The czar’s appointed administrator, Gen. Dmitry Khorvat, assures him the corpses were not Russian and so are of no importance, then asks him to investigate the death of a Russian businessman. The businessman’s daughter describes her father coughing up blood before he died. Evidence mounts of a deadly epidemic made worse by a political cover-up. Matters worsen: a public-relations-minded Chinese epidemiologist breaks with tradition to conduct secret autopsies but refuses to shut down the railway during Chinese New Year; plague-wagons patrol the streets removing people who look sick; a doctor ignoring the baron’s pleas to use masks, gloves, and disinfectant succumbs to contagion, as do countless others. Shields’s Kharbin is plagued not only by disease but also by rumor, superstition, pride, and ignorance. This fictional portrait of a man caught in a real-life medical crisis proves affecting and timely in its exploration of conflicts between cultures and classes, ambition and mortality, science and politics. (Jan.)

From the Publisher

"Based on real events, this is the kind of fiction that fascinates with its power to evoke time and place, morality and mortality, tenderness and love."—Bookpage

"Shields writes movingly of the human cost of this forgotten epidemic. She reminds us that, to an imperceptible enemy, the lines dividing nations are only a mark on a map."—Shelf-Awareness

"Shields presents her novel with the detail and fluidity of the early Russian novelists... THE WINTER STATION offers much for readers of historical fiction."—Bookreporter

"Like a delicate calligraphy, Jody Shields paints a starkly moving picture of our elusive humanity, as ephemeral and beautiful as snowflakes falling from a frozen sky. The images are unforgettable, and the book highly recommended."—Historical Novel Society

"Shields has transformed the scantly recorded memories of the Manchurian plague into a rich narrative, factual in its details and vitalized by the moral complexities of prejudice, politics, honor and responsibility."—Lincoln Star Journal

"If you love historical fiction, you don't want to miss The Winter Station.... the perfect moody book to read on a chilly winter day."—Hello Giggles

"What Shields evokes in her greatest passages...is a fear that pours from the temples: the recognition that we can be set against a swift and terrible force majeure."—Paste Magazine

"The true gift of this remarkable novel is its lyrical portrayal of the Baron and his few allies...Shields (The Fig Eater) joins the high echelon of Boris Akunin and Sam Eastland in re-creating a time when science and reason vie with superstition and prejudice to protect the helpless subjects of the tsar."—Library Journal

"The slow growth of the horror and helplessness of those who can really see the crises growing is beautifully drawn"—STAT News

"[Readers will be] captivated by the atmosphere and the various, essay-like ruminations, which evoke Peter Høeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow (1993)."—Booklist

"The outbreak of plague in Manchuria during the winter of 1910-1911 tests a Russian doctor's physical, emotional, and moral stamina in Shields's accomplished third novel...This fictional portrait of a man caught in a real-life medical crisis proves affecting and timely in its exploration of conflicts between cultures and classes, ambition and mortality, science and politics."—Publisher's Weekly

"The Winter Station is a novel set in Russia that to its great credit reads like a Russian novel. Set early in the 20th Century, it is a story of courage, love, resilience, loyalty during a season of absolute terror. Jody Shields is a fearless writer, with the integrity of a worthy creator, and this novel won't be easily forgotten."—Daniel Woodrell, author of The Maid's Version and Winter's Bone

"In The Winter Station, Shields imagines a new season, one vibrant with intrigue, longing, and history... This book bears a distinct pulse; its beats are tender, evocative, and full of mystery."—Affinity Konar, author of Mischling

"perfect for readers of historical fiction and lovers of thrillers."—Signature

OCTOBER 2018 - AudioFile

A gifted narrator can often salvage a mediocre text, but given a finely written novel, as Simon Vance has here, the result is a showcase of the unique pleasures and sublime artistry of audiobook listening. Set in one of the most remote corners of the world, Shields’s medical thriller is based on an outbreak of bubonic plague in Manchuria in 1910. The voices and accents are diverse, and Vance is a master at rendering character and at maintaining narrative pace and momentum. Most outstanding, however, are the eloquent descriptions of the bleak Eastern landscape and the ragtag communities clustered around the Trans-Siberian Railway. While the narrative is chilling and gripping, Shields’s prose is incandescent, and her narrator is one of the most gifted and accomplished working today. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2017-10-31
In 1910 Manchuria, a doctor is baffled by a deadly epidemic.Shields (The Crimson Portrait, 2006, etc.) may be the first novelist to tackle the mysterious plague that overtook Manchuria early in the last century. In Kharbin, a railroad hub under the joint control of Czarist Russia and the Chinese empire, Russian physician Baron von Budberg, the city's chief medical examiner,, is frustrated when two corpses found near the railway station are spirited away before he can ascertain the cause of death. Soon, such deaths and disappearances are mounting exponentially, both in the hovels of the Chinese laborers and the mansions of the privileged Russian sector. As frigid winter descends, it becomes clear to the Baron and his hospital colleagues that a highly infectious plague has gripped Kharbin. The malady presents initially with mild symptoms, racing pulse and elevated temperature, followed within hours by wracking cough, hemorrhage, and death. The chief difficulty here is that Shields has trouble meshing the disease-thriller aspect of this novel with her almost worshipful character study of the Baron, a humanist equally at home with his Chinese wife, Li Ju, calligraphy lessons, and tea ceremonies as he is with vodka and caviar. Many colorful—or so they are clearly intended—characters cross the Baron's path, including his venal boss, Gen. Khorvat, and his confidants Andreev, a fixer and smuggler, and the dwarf Chang, a tea master. Although his loyalty to less raffish friends as well as his meditative calligraphy practice may lend gravitas to the Baron's persona, he remains a cipher. The depiction of the epidemic hews closely to the known facts: the discarded, frozen bodies, the brutal quarantine methods, and the initially scattershot official response. Unfortunately, though, the narrative is nearly devoid of forward momentum. Rather than do battle, the Baron seems content to ruefully observe the plague's inevitable advance. Potential conflicts, like the Baron's incipient rivalry with a Dr. Wu, whom he views as a young upstart, are never developed.A Manchurian Hot Zone this is not.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173470256
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	01/30/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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