Winter Garden

Can a woman ever really know herself if she doesn't know her mother?

From the author of the smash-hit bestseller Firefly Lane and True Colors comes Kristin Hannah's powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the enduring links between the present and the past.

Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters. As children, the only connection between them was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy tale will be told one last time―and all the way to the end.

Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anya's life in war-torn Leningrad, more than five decades ago. Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina will finally hear the singular, harrowing story of their mother's life, and what they learn is a secret so terrible and terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they believe they are.

Kristin Hannah is the award-winning and bestselling author of more than 20 novels. Her newest novel, The Women, about the nurses who served in the Vietnam war, will be released on February 6, 2024.

The Four Winds was published in February of 2021 and immediately hit #1 on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Indie bookstore's bestseller lists. Additionally, it was selected as a book club pick by the both Today Show and The Book Of the Month club, which named it the best book of 2021.

In 2018, The Great Alone became an instant New York Times #1 bestseller and was named the Best Historical Novel of the Year by Goodreads.

In 2015, The Nightingale became an international blockbuster and was Goodreads Best Historical fiction novel for 2015 and won the coveted People's Choice award for best fiction in the same year. It was named a Best Book of the Year by Amazon, iTunes, Buzzfeed, the Wall Street Journal, Paste, and The Week.

The Nightingale is currently in pre-production at Tri Star. Firefly Lane, her beloved novel about two best friends, was the #1 Netflix series around the world, in the week it came out. The popular tv show stars Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke.

“A . . . searing story with a breathtaking, beautiful ending.”―The Seattle Times

“It's a tearjerker, but the journey is as lovely―and haunting―as a snow filled winter's night.”―People Magazine

“This tearjerker weaves a convincing historical novel and contemporary family drama.”―Library Journal

“Readers will find it hard not to laugh a little and cry a little more as mother and daughters reach out to each other just in the nick of time.”―Publishers Weekly

Kristin Hannah’s Winter Garden is an emotionally devastating and beautifully redemptive novel that explores the complex, often fraught relationships between mothers and daughters, set against the backdrop of one of history’s most harrowing tragedies. The story centers on the Whitson family, who live on a picturesque apple orchard in Washington state. At the heart of the family’s dysfunction is Anya, a remarkably cold, fiercely guarded, and withholding mother who has never shown a shred of affection to her two daughters, Meredith and Nina. The girls’ only source of warmth has been their loving and devoted father, Evan, who has spent his life acting as a buffer between his icy wife and his bewildered children. Because of this dynamic, the sisters have grown up wildly different and largely estranged from one another. Meredith stayed home, becoming a rigid, practical perfectionist who runs the family orchard and suppresses her own emotions, while Nina became a highly successful but fiercely independent photojournalist who travels to dangerous war zones to avoid dealing with her own life.

The fragile equilibrium of the Whitson family is shattered when Evan falls terminally ill. On his deathbed, he extracts a profound and difficult promise from his wife and daughters. He begs Anya to finally tell the girls the ending of a Russian fairy tale she used to whisper to them when they were little—a dark, fractured story she would never finish. To Meredith and Nina, he issues a final plea: they must listen to the story all the way through, and they must try to discover who their mother truly is. When Evan dies, the family is cast into a sea of profound grief. Without his mediating presence, the distance between the women feels insurmountable. Meredith’s deeply suppressed grief begins to tear her marriage apart, while Nina immediately flees overseas, only to be forced back home after a terrifying incident in a war zone. Stranded together in their shared sorrow, the sisters slowly realize that fulfilling their father’s dying wish is the only way forward.

Reluctantly, Anya begins to spin her fractured fairy tale, demanding that it only be told at night, sitting in the freezing cold of her cherished winter garden. As the story unfurls, the sisters—and the reader—gradually realize that this is no fairy tale at all. It is the closely guarded, deeply traumatic true story of their mother’s life. Anya was once a passionate, hopeful young woman named Vera, living in the Soviet Union before the outbreak of World War II. Through her late-night storytelling, she transports her daughters back to the horrific, unimaginable nightmare of the Siege of Leningrad. Hannah spares no detail in depicting the brutal reality of the blockade, painting a vivid picture of a city slowly freezing and starving to death over the course of nearly nine hundred days.

Through these gripping historical flashbacks, Meredith and Nina learn of the agonizing choices their mother had to make just to survive. They hear of a vibrant young woman who loved fiercely, only to have everything methodically stripped away by war. Anya recounts the agonizing loss of her extended family, the unbearable hunger that reduced the citizens of Leningrad to ghosts, and the ultimate, unspeakable tragedy of losing her first husband and her young children to starvation and the biting winter cold. The sheer weight of this revelation completely shifts the daughters' understanding of the woman who raised them. They finally comprehend that their mother’s emotional paralysis was not born out of a lack of love, but out of a desperate, subconscious need to protect herself from ever experiencing that level of agonizing loss again. Her heart was essentially frozen in the snows of Leningrad, rendering her incapable of fully attaching to the children she had later in life.

The shared unburdening of this massive, painful history becomes the catalyst for profound healing. As Anya’s icy exterior finally melts away, the three women embark on a poignant journey to Alaska to uncover the final, lingering mysteries of her past. This shared quest bridges the chasm between them, allowing Meredith to confront her own emotional walls and save her marriage, and giving Nina the courage to finally accept love and put down roots. The novel concludes as a powerful testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the redemptive power of understanding. Because Winter Garden weaves such a dense, historically rich narrative with intensely emotional character arcs, it is exactly the kind of absorbing story that is perfect for your preferred digital reading style. Since you enjoy utilizing Kindle and Google Books for their convenience and searchability, downloading a free ebook sample of this novel is highly recommended. The digital format will allow you to easily carry this sweeping, multi-generational epic with you wherever you go, making it a fantastic addition to your expansive personal library.