The Winter Soldier
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4.2 • 335 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The epic story of war and medicine from the award-winning author of North Woods and The Piano Tuner is "a dream of a novel...part mystery, part war story, part romance" (Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See).
Vienna, 1914. Lucius is a twenty-two-year-old medical student when World War I explodes across Europe. Enraptured by romantic tales of battlefield surgery, he enlists, expecting a position at a well-organized field hospital. But when he arrives, at a commandeered church tucked away high in a remote valley of the Carpathian Mountains, he finds a freezing outpost ravaged by typhus. The other doctors have fled, and only a single, mysterious nurse named Sister Margarete remains.
But Lucius has never lifted a surgeon's scalpel. And as the war rages across the winter landscape, he finds himself falling in love with the woman from whom he must learn a brutal, makeshift medicine. Then one day, an unconscious soldier is brought in from the snow, his uniform stuffed with strange drawings. He seems beyond rescue, until Lucius makes a fateful decision that will change the lives of doctor, patient, and nurse forever.
From the gilded ballrooms of Imperial Vienna to the frozen forests of the Eastern Front; from hardscrabble operating rooms to battlefields thundering with Cossack cavalry, The Winter Soldier is the story of war and medicine, of family, of finding love in the sweeping tides of history, and finally, of the mistakes we make, and the precious opportunities to atone.
"The Winter Soldier brims with improbable narrative pleasures...These pages crackle with excitement... A spectacular success." —Anthony Marra, New York Times Book Review
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
With this tension-filled, exquisitely detailed story, Daniel Mason reinvents the war novel. It’s 1914 and Viennese medical student Lucius Krzelewski is posted at a makeshift army hospital in the remote Carpathian Mountains. There, he gets hands-on training in the gory intricacies of combat-zone medicine and learns a lot from a savvy nurse. Mason is intensely interested in the emotional and psychological fallout of war: what affects Lucius while he’s at the front and what dogs him when he leaves. Vivid prose and empathetic characters make The Winter Soldier a breathtaking, unforgettable read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Mason's moving historical novel (after The Piano Tuner), Lucius Krzelewski is a 22-year-old, upper-class medical student in 1914 Vienna who, after Austria enters World War I, volunteers for duty. Despite his lack of practical experience, he is sent to a field hospital in the Carpathian Mountains, where he is expected to perform emergency surgeries. Fortunately, he is guided by Sister Margarete, a nurse with a mysterious background who teaches him the surgical skills he lacks. They go on to become lovers. One day, they are given a new patient, a shell-shocked soldier who can only communicate by drawing pictures. Lucius becomes obsessed with finding a cure for this patient, who is dubbed the winter soldier. Then, Margarete disappears and Lucius gets lost looking for her. He is transferred to another medical unit, then is returned home to Vienna. But despite an arranged marriage, Lucius can't go on with his life until he finds out what happened to Margarete and the winter soldier. Mason's old-fashioned novel delivers a sweeping yet intimate account of WWI, and in Lucius, the author has created an outstanding protagonist. Reminiscent of Thomas Keneally's Season in Purgatory, this novel is a fine addition to fictional testaments of doctors and nurses during wartime.
Customer Reviews
Well Done
Detailed, moving, exciting. A wonderful
book for our times. We mustn’t forget what others have done and what they endured. This will remind you of those souls who experienced horror and survived.
Rich details
I loved this book, but if I could have given it 4.5 I would have because although it was beautifully told, the narrative was narrowly focused on the love story. You know it is not going to turn out the way Lucius wants it to, and if you’re the kind that tries to guess the endings, a little predictable. I love when books give you details about the sights, the smells, the tastes and in that this book is a master piece.