Annie Bell can't escape the dust. It's in her hair, covering the windowsills, coating the animals in the barn, and in the corners of her children's dry, cracked lips. It's 1934, and the Bell farm in Mulehead, Oklahoma, is struggling as the earliest storms of the Dust Bowl descend. The wheat harvests are drying out, and people are packing up their belongings as storms lay waste to the Great Plains. As the Bells wait for the rains to come, Annie and...

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